Dark Heritage

By Marcus B. Christian

I helped to build this great America --

Started her up from rude huts

Thrown down in the midst of wildernesses.

I beat back those wildernesses,

Dared the ever-advancing forests,

Plowed and planted,

Hoed and harvested,

To feed her weak and disheartened colonists,

Besieged by fear and Indians.

I helped to build this great America;

I watched her shore-line creep

From Maine to Massachusetts

And tidewater Virginia

Down through the Carolinas

To the Florida Everglades.

I fought Indians, Redcoats

And the stony, barren soil of New England;

I tilled the great Virginia estates --

The homes of Presidents;

I sang in the rice-fields of Georgia and the Carolinas;

Toiled in the swamps and on the sugar and cotton plantations

   of Louisiana and Mississippi,

While the bull-whip of the overseer

Zigzagged like black lightning about my head

And cracked like the thunder of doom.

As I bowed down

In tobacco-fields, rice-fields, corn-fields

   and cotton-fields,

I sang so sweetly

That America believed me happy.

Then, gathering about her the airs of a Democracy,

She stretched forth welcome hands

To the dispossessed millions of Europe:

The Irish, German, West End Englishman, Italian,

    Frenchman, Spaniard, Portuguese, Slovak, Pole,

    Jew and Armenian, saying:

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-

   laden, and I will give you rest."

But I toiled on.

I toiled on until honest men could stand the sight

   no longer

Of my black back, bleeding and raw,

Bowed down in humble, earth-kissed supplication

Before the Gods of Greed.

And then, at last, contending streams of blood,

Merging, made closer this great land of ours.

I saved America from discord.

I caught the flying javelins of hate against my

   own bosom.

Keeping them free of the Catholic and Protestant,

Republican and Democrat,

Irish and German,

Blonde and Brunette,

Native and Alien Stock,

Pilgrim and Puritan.

The fear of me made all men cease their bickerings

And I became the scapegoat of the nation.

In times of stresses, wars and blasting storms,

This one thing I shall evermore remember:

That all of the strength and the blood and the

   sweat of me --

That all of my longings, my sorrows, my hopes

   and my joys

Went into making this great land of ours;

That this is my land by the right of both God and

   of man --

That this is my land, wet with my own life's

   blood --

That it is enriched with the flesh and the bones

   of my fathers --

That this land is mine, grown big through my

   pain and sufferings;

That all I am today and ever shall be

Lies deeply buried in her plains and valleys,

Swamps, hills and mountains,

Meadows, lakes and streams.

I shall forever be a part of her

And she will always be a part of me.

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