BURY ME IN A FREE LAND

Make me a grave where'er you will,

In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill,

Make it among earth's humblest graves,

But not in a land where men are slaves.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might

Can rob no man of his dearest right;

My rest shall be in any grave

Where none can call his brother a slave. 

I ask no monument, proud and high,

To arrest the gaze of the passers-by;

All that my yearning spirit craves,

Is bury me not in a land of slaves.

Written by Frances E. Harper, born in 1825, one of the early African American writers.

America

America, it is to thee,

Thou boasted land of liberty,-

It is to to thee I raise my song, 

Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong,

It is to thee my native land,

From which has issued many a band

To tear the black man from his soil, 

And force him to delve and toil;

Chained on your blood-bemoistened sod,

Cringing beneath a tyrant's rod,

Stripped of those rights which Nature's God

Bequeathed to all the human race,

Bound to a petty tyrant's nod, 

Because he wears a paler face.

Was it for this that freedom's fires

Were kindled by your patriot sires?

Was it for this they shed their blood,

On hill and plain, on field and flood?

Was it for this that wealth and life

Were staked upon that desperate strife, 

Which drenched this land for seven long years

With blood of men, and women's tears?

When black and white fought side by side.....

Written by James M. Whitfield, one of the early African American writers, from the 19th century.

Reposition Yourself