margaret walkerIn the 1942 Foreword to This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems by Margaret Walker, Stephen Vincent Benét wrote how difficult it was to select any one poem to highlight Walker’s work. I couldn’t agree more but I wanted to share some of her poems on our blog since it is Ms. Walker’s birthday on Friday. She would have been 98.

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These verses are from Walker’s poem “For My People”.

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama

backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor and jail

and soldier and school and mama and cooking and playhouse

and concert and store and hair and Miss Choomby and

company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn to

know the reasons why and the answers to and the people who

and the places where and the days when, in memory of the

bitter hours when we discovered we were black and poor and

small and different and nobody cared and nobody wondered

and nobody understood;

.     .     .

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox

Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Orleans,

lost disinherited dispossessed and happy people filling the

cabarets and taverns and other people’s pockets needing bread

and shoes and milk and land and money and something–

something all our own.

.     .     .

this is my century“For My People” can be found in its entirety in This Is My Century.

margaret walker jubileeOn Friday at 11:30 am there is a celebration of Ms. Walker’s birthday with music and free food. Everyone is invited. Follow the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center on Facebook. More info is also available on the center’s website.

 

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