L. Prang & Co. Bird’s Nest with Vines. Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Digital Commonwealth. Public Domain.
“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?”
“Not I,” said the cow, “moo, oo, moo, oo!
Such a thing I’d never do.
I gave you a wisp of hay,
But didn’t take your nest away:
Not I,” said the cow, “moo, oo, moo, oo!
Such a thing I’d never do!”
“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?”
“Bobolink! Bobolink!
Now, what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plum tree to-day?”
“Not I,” said the dog, “bow wow!
I couldn’t be so mean, I trow–
I gave hairs the nest to make,
But the nest I did not take.
Not I,” said the dog, “bow wow!
I couldn’t be so mean I trow.”
“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice warm nest I made?”
“Bobolink! Bobolink!
Now, what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plum tree to-day?”
“Coo, coo! Coo, coo! Coo, coo!
Let me speak a word, too–
Who stole that pretty nest
From little yellow-breast?”
“Not I,” said the sheep, “oh, no!
I would not treat a poor bird so.
I gave wool the nest to line,
But the nest was none of mine:
Baa, baa,” said the sheep, “oh, no!
I wouldn’t treat a poor bird so.”
Pages from “Who Stole the Bird’s Nest?” This accordion picture book was published by L. Prang & Company in 1864-65. In this edition, the text of the poem is slightly different from the original. There is no author or illustrator credit. Public Domain.
“To whit! To whit! To whee!
Will you listen to me?
Who stole four eggs I laid,
And the nice nest I made?”
“Bobolink! Bobolink!
Now, what do you think?
Who stole a nest away
From the plum tree to-day?”
“Coo, coo! Coo, coo! Coo, coo!
Let me speak a word, too–
Who stole that pretty nest
From little yellow-breast?”
“Caw, caw,” cried the crow,
I should like to know,
What thief took away
A bird’s nest to-day?”
“Cluck, cluck,” said the hen,
“Don’t ask me again,
Why! I haven’t a chick
That would do such trick.
We all gave her a feather,
And she wove them together.
I’d scorn to intrude
On her and her brood:
Cluck, cluck,” said the hen,
“don’t ask me again.”
“Chirr-a-whirr! Chirr-a-whirr!
All the birds make a stir!
Let us find out his name,
And all cry: ‘For shame!’”
“I would not rob a bird,”
Said little Mary Green;
“I think I never heard
Of anything so mean.”
“’T is very cruel, too,”
Said little Alice Neal;
“I wonder if he knew,
How sad the bird would feel!”
A little boy hung down his head,
And went and hid behind his bed;
For he stole that pretty nest,
From poor little yellow-breast;
And he felt so full of shame,
He didn’t like to tell his name.
L. Prang & Co. Bird’s Eggs. Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1897, Digital Commonwealth. Public Domain.
CHILD, LYDIA MARIA. “WHO STOLE THE BIRD’S NEST,” IN STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, COMPILED BY SUSAN S. HARRIMAN, 117-21 [VOLUME ONE OF THE KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN’S HOUR, ED. BY LUCY WHEELOCK]. BOSTON, NEW YORK: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1920.
Contexts
Lydia Maria Child’s “Who Stole the Bird’s Nest?” was initially published in 1844 in the second volume of Child’s Flowers for Children. Its inclusion in Lucy Wheelock’s anthology for kindergarteners, more than seventy years later, attests to Child’s cultural influence and to the timelessness of the conservation drive that animates her poem.
Wheelock (1857-1946), main editor of the The Kindergarten Children’s Hour, was at one point the president of the International Kindergarten Union. Through her pedagogical practice, she supported the kindergarten reform in the United States and helped bridge early disagreements about how to teach 5-year-olds. She believed that kindergarten education could help tackle the cycle of poverty, a concern that remains relevant today.
The Kindergarten Children’s Hour was comprised of five illustrated volumes. Susan S. Harriman was in charge of the first one, a collection of stories and rhymes for little children. In the second, Maude C. Nash suggests home activities, while in the third Winthrop Packard turns her interactions with her own children in a series of “Talks to Children.” Following a logical progression, the fourth volume consisted of “Talks to Mothers.” In the fifth and final book, Alice Wyman anthologized songs and music for children.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
trow: To believe in or on; to have confidence in; to trust to. Obsolete or rare (archaic).
wisp: A handful, bunch, or small bundle (of hay, straw, grass, etc.).
Resources for Further Study
In addition to being a writer, Lydia Maria Child was also a prominent abolitionist and activist. She is one of the inductees at the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum.
There is nothing birds will not try to integrate into their nests! Learn how to help them build safer nests by making safe materials available to them.
And here is what to do if you find a nest where it may not belong.
L. Prang & Co. (publisher). To my Valentine. Color chromolithograph, 1882, Library of Congress. Public Domain.
O dandelion, yellow as gold,
What do you do all day?
I just wait here in the tall green grass
Till the children come to play.
O dandelion, yellow as gold,
What do you do all night?
I wait and wait till the cool dews fall
And my hear grows long and white.
And what do you do when your hair is white,
And the children come to play?
They take me up in their dimpled hands,
And blow my hair away.[1]
ANONYMOUS. “THE DANDELION,” IN STORIES FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, COMPILED BY SUSAN S. HARRIMAN, 10 [VOLUME ONE OF THE KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN’S HOUR, ED. BY LUCY WHEELOCK]. BOSTON, NEW YORK: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1920.
[1] A time lapse video shows a single dandelion’s cycle from yellow flower to puffy head of seeds. Also, did you know that each dandelion’s petal is, in fact, a flower?
Contexts
Lucy Wheelock (1857-1946), the main editor of the multivolume anthology The Kindergarten Children’s Hour, was at one point the president of the International Kindergarten Union. Through her pedagogical practice, she supported the kindergarten reform in the United States and helped bridge early disagreements about how to teach 5-year-olds. She believed that kindergarten education could help tackle the cycle of poverty, a concern that remains relevant today.
The Kindergarten Children’s Hour was comprised of five illustrated volumes. Susan S. Harriman was in charge of the first one, a collection of stories and rhymes for little children. In the second, Maude C. Nash suggests home activities, while in the third Winthrop Packard turns her interactions with her own children in a series of “Talks to Children.” Following a logical progression, the fourth volume consisted of “Talks to Mothers.” In the fifth and final book, Alice Wyman anthologized songs and music for children.
Resources for Further Study
Native to Asia and Europe, dandelions arrived in America in the seventeenth century. An article from the National Library of Medicine documents many of the uses of this perennial plant.
Dandelions fell out of favor among home gardeners in the twentieth century as lawns in the United States became popular as status symbols. Ketzel Levine, writing for NPR, asks us to reconsider the collective dislike of the wish-granting plant.
Augusta Savage. Gamin. Painted plaster, c. 1929, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Benjamin and Olya Margolin. Public Domain.
‘Tis a noble gift to be brown, all brown,
Like the strongest things that make
up this earth,
Like the mountains grave and grand,
Even like the very land,
Even like the trunks of trees—
Even oaks, to be like these!
God builds His strength in bronze.
To be brown like thrush and lark![1][2]
Like the subtle wren so dark!
Nay, the king of beasts wears brown;[3]
Eagles are of this same hue.
I thank God, then, I am brown.
Brown has mighty things to do.
NEWSOME, EFFIE LEE. “THE BRONZE LEGACY (TO A BROWN BOY).” THE CRISIS 24, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1922): 265.
Wood Thrush, from the Birds of America Series (N4) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands. Commercial color lithograph, 1888, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.
[1] The thrushes are a large passerine bird family, also known as perching birds or songbirds. Although some of the thrushes that occur in North America are brown, like the wood thrush pictured above, they vary in color and include species like the American robin and the eastern bluebird!
[2] The larks are a large family of songbirds whose species occur mainly in Africa. According to the OED, however, the name, when used without specification, usually refers to the Eurasian skylark, a brown songbird celebrated by poets and naturalists alike. The horned lark is the only lark that is native to North America. During the early twentieth-century, English settlers tried to introduce the Eurasian skylark to the region with little success, although a small population of these famous songbirds persists in southern Vancouver Island.
Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.
In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”
The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
thrush: A name of two British and general European birds.
Resources for Further Study
In October 1922, W. E. B. Du Bois sent a typed copy of “The Bronze Legacy (To a Brown Boy),” to Margaret S. Thompson, a subscriber to The Crisis who had apparently inquired about the poem. Both the printed copy and Du Bois’s accompanying letter at available online, courtesy of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives.
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, champion of multicultural children’s literature, makes a case for reading Effie Lee Newsome today.
Contemporary Connections
In her book Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, Robin Bernstein illustrates how the American idea of childhood innocence became racialized and excluded black children. A poem like Newsome’s “The Bronze Legacy” pushes in the opposite direction while encouraging racial pride.
Henry Ossawa Tanner. The Banjo Lesson. Oil on canvas, 1893, Hampton University Museum, VA. Public Domain.
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake your brown feet, chil',
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake 'em swift and wil'—
Get way back, honey,
Do that low-down step.
Get on over, darling,
Now! Step out
With your left.
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake 'em, honey chil'.
Sun's going down this evening—
Might never rise no mo'.
The sun's going down this very night—
Might never rise no mo'—
So dance with swift feet, honey,
(The banjo's sobbing low),[1]
Dance with swift feet, honey—
Might never dance no mo'.
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
Shake 'em, Liza, chil',
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
(The music's soft and wil').
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
(The banjo's sobbing low),
The suns's going down this very night—
Might never rise no mo'.
Hughes, langston. “song for a banjo dance.” THE CRISIS 24, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1922): 267.
[1] Although today the banjo is mostly associated with bluegrass music, the earliest iterations of this musical instrument “were played exclusively by the enslaved at least two hundred years before whites ever considered laying hands on what was, to the slaveholding culture, a ‘primitive’ instrument.”
Contexts
Original cover from The Crisis‘ number that included “The Yellow Tree.”
Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.
In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”
The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.
Resources for Further Study
A photo essay by banjo scholar and performer Tony Thomas traces historical relationship between the banjo and African American musical culture.
The Creole bania, the oldest existing banjo, came from Suriname, in the Caribbean, and is on permanent display at the Tropenmuseum in the Netherlands.
Dena J. Epstein’s 1977 Sinful Tunes and Spiritualstraces the history of African American music up to the Civil War. The book was the culmination of Epstein’s twenty-year research. She touches upon drums, banjo, and other instruments.
In 2014, Malian n’goni player Cheick Hamala performed together with bluegrass banjoist Sammy Shelor and multi-instrumentalist Danny Knicely at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in Charlottesville, Virginia. The n’goni is the traditional string instrument that evolved into the Banjo in North America. The concert was aptly named “From Africa to Appalachia.”
Henry Ossawa Tanner. Portrait of the Artist’s Mother. Oil on canvas, 1897, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Don’t knock on my door, little child,[1]
I cannot let you in;
You know not what a world this is,
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you.
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you through.
Don't knock at my heart, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf ears to your call,
Time and time again.
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth.
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I cannot give you birth.
[1] Also in 1922, Georgia Douglas Johnson, one of the key figures of the Harlem Renaissance, published Bronze: A Book of Verse, which included the poem “Motherhood” under a different title: “Black Woman.” This significant change illuminates the racial component of Johnson’s concerns.
Contexts
In the same number of The Crisis that included Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poem, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “birth control is science and sense applied to the bringing of children into the world.” Writing about the responsibilities associated with large families, specifically in African American communities, he added that “parents owe their children, first of all, health and strength. Few women can bear more than two or three children and retain strength for the other interests of life. And there are other interests for women as for men and only reactionary barbarians deny this.”
Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.
In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”
The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.
Resources for Further Study
The Comstock Act of 1873 made it illegal to mail “obscene, lewd or lascivious,” “immoral,” or “indecent” materials, a category that included texts or instruments associated with contraception and abortion. The act’s birth control provisions were overturned in 1936, thanks to the work of activist Margaret Sanger (1879-1966).
Georgia Douglas Johnson’s poem foregrounds the speaker’s choice and heartbreaking logic, but it is important to recognize that the United States has a long history of forced sterilization, experimentation and reproductive coercion aimed at poor women and women of color.
SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Collective, is a national organization that wants to “build an effective network of individuals and organizations to improve institutional policies and systems that impact the reproductive lives of marginalized communities.”
Albert Lubaki. Untitled. Watercolor, c. 1929, Fabrice Gousset/Cornette de Saint Cyr, Paris. Public Domain.
At daybreak Monday morning we had finished our breakfast by candle light and with staff in hand we marched northeast for Lukunga. [1]
In two days we sighted the Mission Compound. Word had reached the missionaries (A. B. M. U.) that foreigners were approaching, and they came out to meet and greet us. [2] We were soon hurried into their cool and comfortable mud houses. Our faithful cook was dismissed, for we were to take our meals with the missionaries.
Mr. Hoste, who is at the head of this station, came into our room and mentioned that the numerous spiders, half the size of your hand, on the walls were harmless. “But,” said he, as he raised his hand and pointed to a hole over the door, “there is a nest of scorpions; you must be careful in moving in or out, for they will spring upon you.”
Well, you ought to have seen us dodging in and out that door. After supper, not discrediting the veracity of the gentleman, we set to work, and for an hour we spoiled the walls by smashing spiders with slippers.
The next morning the mission station was excited over the loss of their only donkey. The donkey had been feeding in the field and a boa-constrictor had captured him, squeezed him into pulp, dragged him a hundred yards down to the river bank, and was preparing to swallow him.[3] The missionaries, all with guns, took aim and fired, killing the twenty-five-foot boa-constrictor. The boa was turned over to the natives and they had a great feast. The missionaries told us many tales about how the boa-constrictor would come by night and steal away their goats, hogs, and dogs.
The sand around Lukunga is a hot-bed for miniature fleas, or “jiggers.” [4] The second day of our stay at Lukunga our feet had swollen and itched terribly, and on examination we found that these “jiggers” had entered under our toe nails and had grown to the size of a pea. A native was called and with a small sharpened stick they were cut out. We saw natives with toes and fingers eaten entirely off by these pests. Mr. Hoste told us to keep our toes well greased with palm oil. We followed his instructions, but grease with sand and sun made our socks rather “heavy.”
The native church here is very strong spiritually.
The church bell, a real big brass bell, begins to ring at 8 A. M. and continues for an hour. The natives in the neighborhood come teeming by every trail, take their seats quietly, and listen attentively to the preaching of God’s word. No excitement, no shouting, but an intelligent interest shown by looking and listening from start to finish.
In the evening you can hear from every quarter our hymns sung by the natives in their own language. They are having their family devotions before retiring.
Our second day’s march brought us to a large river. Our loads and men were ferried over in canoes. Mr. Lapsley and I decided to swim it, and so we jumped in and struck out for the opposite shore. On landing we were told by a native watchman that we had done a very daring thing. He explained with much excitement and many gestures that the river was filled with crocodiles, and that he did not expect to see us land alive on his side. We camped on the top of the hill overlooking N’Kissy and the wild rushing Congo Rapids. It was in one of these whirlpools that young Pocock, Stanley’s last survivor, perished.
In the “Pool” we saw many hippopotami, and longed to go out in a canoe and shoot one, but being warned of the danger from the hippopotami and also of the treacherous current of the Congo River, which might take us over the rapids and to death, we were afraid to venture. A native Bateke fisherman,[5] just a few days before our arrival, had been crushed in his canoe by a bull-hippopotamus.[6] Many stories of hippopotami horrors were told us.
One day Chief N’Galiama with his attendant came to the mission and told Dr. Simms that the people in the village were very hungry and to see if it were possible for him to get some meat to eat.
Dr. Simms called me and explained how the people were on the verge of a famine and if I could kill them a hippopotamus it would help greatly. He continued to explain that the meat and hide would be dried by the people and, using but a little at each meal, would last them a long time. Dr. Simms mentioned that he had never hunted, but he knew where the game was. He said, “I will give you a native guide, you go with him around the first cataract about two miles from here and you will find the hippopotami.” I was delighted at the idea, and being anxious to use my “Martini Henry” rifle and to help the hungry people, I consented to go.[7] In an hour and a half we had walked around the rapids, across the big boulders, and right before us were at least a dozen big hippopotami. Some were frightened, ducked their heads and made off; others showed signs of fight and defiance.
At about fifty yards distant I raised my rife and let fly at one of the exposed heads. My guide told me that the hippopotamus was shot and killed. In a few minutes another head appeared above the surface of the water and again taking aim I fired with the same result. The guide, who was a subject of the Chief N’Galiama, sprang upon a big boulder and cried to me to look at the big bubbles which were appearing on the water; then explained in detail that the hippopotami had drowned and would rise to the top of the water within an hour.
The guide asked to go to a fishing camp nearby and call some men to secure the hippopotami when they rose, or else they would go out with the current and over the rapids. In a very short time about fifty men, bringing native rope with them, were on the scene and truly, as the guide had said, up came the first hippopotamus, his big back showing first. A number of the men were off swimming with the long rope which was tied to the hippopotamus’ foot. A signal was given and every man did his best. No sooner had we secured the one near shore than there was a wild shout to untie and hasten for the other. These two were securely tied by their feet and big boulders were rolled on the rope to keep them from drifting out into the current.
The short tails of both of them were cut off and we started home. We reported to Dr. Simms that we had about four or five tons of meat down on the river bank. The native town ran wild with delight. Many natives came to examine my gun which had sent the big bullets crashing through the brain of the hippopotami. Early the next morning N’Galiama sent his son Nzelie with a long caravan of men to complete the work. They leaped upon the backs of the hippopotami, wrestled with each other for a while, and then with knives and axes fell to work. The missionaries enjoyed a hippopotamus steak that day also.
Before the chickens began to crow for dawn I was alarmed by a band of big, broad-headed, determined driver ants.[8] They filled the cabin, the bed, the yard. There were millions. They were in my head, my eyes, my nose, and pulling at my toes. When I found it was not a dream, I didn’t tarry long.
Some of our native boys came with torches of fire to my rescue. They are the largest and the most ferocious ant we know anything about. In an incredibly short space of time they can kill any goat, chicken, duck, hog or dog on the place. In a few hours there is not a rat, mouse, snake, centipede, spider, or scorpion in your house, as they are chased, killed and carried away. We built a fire and slept inside of the circle until day.
We scraped the acquaintance of these soldier ants by being severely bitten and stung. They are near the size of a wasp and use both ends with splendid effect. They live deep down in the ground and come out of a smoothly cut hole, following each other single file, and when they reach a damp spot in the forest and hear the white ants cutting away on the fallen leaves, the leader stops until all the soldiers have caught up. A circle is formed, a peculiar hissing is the order to raid, and down under the leaves they dart, and in a few minutes they come out with their pinchers filled with white ants. The line, without the least excitement, is again formed and they march back home stepping high with their prey.
The small White Ants have a blue head and a white, soft body and are everywhere in the ground and on the surface. They live by eating dead wood and leaves.[9]
We got rid of the driver ants by keeping up a big fire in their cave for a week. We dug up the homes of the big black ants and they moved off. But there was no way possible to rid the place of the billions of white ants. They ate our dry goods boxes, our books, our trunks, our beds, shoes, hats and clothing. The natives make holes in the ground, entrapping the ants, and use them for food.[10]
The dogs look like ordinary curs, with but little hair on them, and they never bark or bite. I asked the people to explain why their dogs didn’t bark. So they told me that once they did bark, but long ago the dogs and leopards had a big fight, the dogs whipped the leopards, and after that the leopards were very mad, so the mothers of the little dogs told them not to bark any more, and they hadn’t barked since.[11]
The natives tie wooden bells around their dogs to know where they are. Every man knows the sound of his bell just as we would know the bark of our dog.
There are many, many kinds of birds of the air, all known and called by name, and the food they eat, their mode of building nests, etc., were familiar to the people. They knew the customs and habits of the elephant, hippopotamus, buffalo, leopard, hyena, jackal, wildcat, monkey, mouse, and every animal which roams the great forest and plain, – from the thirty-foot boa-constrictor to a tiny tulu their names and nature were well known.
The little children could tell you the native names of all insects, such as caterpillars, crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers, locusts, mantis, honey bees, bumble bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, goliath beetles, stage beetles, ants, etc.
The many species of fish, eels and terrapins were on the end of their tongues, and these were all gathered and used for food. All the trees of the forest and plain, the flowers, fruits, nuts and berries were known and named. Roots which are good for all maladies were not only known to the medicine man, but the common people knew them also.
SHEPPARD, WILLIAM HENRY. “ANIMAL LIFE IN THE CONGO,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 135-42. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
[1] Lukunga is a district of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital.
[2] ABMU is the acronym for the American Baptist Missionary Union, an international missionary society founded in 1814.
[3] Boa constrictors are endemic to the Americas, not Africa. The biggest snake in Africa is the African Rock Python, which can reach a length of 20 to 30 feet.
[4] The chigoe flea, commonly known as jigger, causes a painful infestation that included borrowing under the host’s skin. Originally from the South America and the Caribbean, jiggers spread to Africa at the end of the 19th century.
[5] The Teke or Bateke people are a Bantu Central African ethnic group mainly located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The word “teke” means “to buy.”
[6] Male hippopotami are called bulls and female hippopotami are called cows. They are very territorial.
[7] The British Empire adopted the Martini-Henry rifle in 1871 and kept it in service for 47 years. This firearm is sometimes referred to as a weapon of Empire.
[8] Driver ants, which belong to the genus Dorylus, hunt together for prey in massive swarm raids. Due to their ferocity, they effectively “drive” many animals before them.
[9] White ants are not ants at all, but termites, social insects that build large nests and, due to the damage the cause to wooden structures, are widely classified as pests.
Clusters. 1884-85, Popular Science Unknown. Single Termite Mounds or in Clusters. 1884-85, Popular Science Monthly. Public Domain.
[10] Yes, termites are edible! A good source of protein, fat and minerals, they probably figured in our ancestors’ diet and many people eat them today.
[11] The Basenji is a very old breed of dog hound native to central Africa. Although known as “the barkless dog,” they do produce yodel-like vocalizations.
Contexts
Sheppard’s essay was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
cur: A dog: now always depreciative or contemptuous; a worthless, low-bred, or snappish dog. Formerly (and still sometimes dialectally) applied without depreciation, especiallyto a watchdog or shepherd’s dog.
Visit the collection of William Henry Sheppard’s papers a the Presbyterian Historical Society’s website.
Texts written by and about Sheppard at the Log College Press’s website, which collects writings from American presbyterians from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Egon Schiele. Small Tree in Late Autumn. Oil on wood, 1911, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria. Public Domain.
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
Plum Street is a firm believer in “signs.” It is not an ordinary street—not even physically, for it begins at Ludlow, stops on Clark where the trolley passes, picks itself up a half block south on Clark and rushes across the railroad straight uphill to the Fair Grounds. In the early nineties it was the thoroughfare for the “southend,” but Jasper Hunley, who bought Lester Snyder’s house at public auction, proved to be a “fair” Negro. Then the Exodus![1] In 1919 Negroes had been in undisputed possession for twenty years.[2]
Like the colors of their faces, the houses vary. There is Jasper Hunley’s big brown house with built-in china cabinet and bookcases, hardwood floors and overstuffed furniture. On either side of him in white houses live the Reverend Burns and Policeman Jenkins in a little less state, with portable furniture sparsely upholstered, and carpets. Across the street lives Mother Stewart and Reverend Gordon in plain barefaced houses with scarred pine furniture.
At the close of the January day, Mary Hunley sat watching at her window for Eva Lou’s home-coming from the office. Again she recalled vividly the June day she had sat with bed-ridden Mother Stewart while Lucy went to market. She had been sitting at the second story window feasting her eyes upon her hardwon home across the street—a big house in a big yard with flowers and young trees in spring garb. The roses were beginning to open. She had smiled contentedly as her eyes lingered on each bush and shrub but a puzzled frown crossed her brow as she noticed her youngest maple had yellowed. She wondered if worms were at its root.
She turned her eyes to gaze down at the Reverend Mr. Gordon, who pulled his broad brimmed hat further over his eyes, squared himself on his bare board bench in the corner of the yard and sank into a revery. Unpainted palings enclosed the tiny grassless yard about his unpainted weather-stained house, distinguished from its neighbors only by a bright blue screen door. The Reverend, tall, broad, his brown face growing darker with age, had lived on Plum street ever since he had been called from the janitorship of the Mecklin Building to the pastorate of the St. Luke’s Baptist Church. He had come to be the oracle of the street.
His dreams were respectfully broken by the greetings of returning marketers. Mary listened idly until Lucy stopped for a conversation. They spoke of the movies and the man there to whom the whole town was flocking for advance information on the future. Lucy thought his amazing replies all a trick. Mr. Gordon concurred.
Mary Vaux Walcott. Carolina Maple. Watercolor on paper, 1923, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public Domain
“Yet,” he said, “the Lawd do give wahnin’ of things t’come t’them that believes, Miss Lucy. Ah’m not a-tall supstitious but when ah gits a sign ah knows it.”
“Yassuh,” Lucy nodded.
“Las’ yeah,” he continued, “ah says to Mrs. Reveren’ Burns that somebody in that house on the cornuh o’ Clark would die ‘fore spring come agin. She laffed. In Feb’uary the oldest boy died o’ consumption. The new leaves on d’tree in d’front yahd turned yeller. When a tree does that, Miss Lucy, death comes in the fam’ly fore a yeah is gone.”
He paused portentously. Mary Hunley leaned unsteadily closer to the window. He spoke solemnly as he pointed his long finger.
“That tree yonde’ in Jasper Hunley’s yahd turned yeller las’ night. This is June, Miss Lucy. The Lawd do give wahnin’s to them as believes.”
Mary Hunley never knew how she got home. She only knew the Lord had sent her warning. She had always believed in signs—and the few times she had ignored them they had told truth with a vengeance.
When but a girl a circus fortune-teller had drawn a picture of her future husband who should bring money and influence. When Jasper Hunley, carpenter, came a-wooing, his likeness to the picture made the match. She never really loved him, but he was her Fate so they married.
William Bullard. Portrait of Martha (Patsy) Perkins. Photograph, 1901, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum. Public Domain.
The first year of her marriage she dreamed three nights that they had moved into a big brown house. When Lester Snyder went bankrupt—Jasper bought the house. They moved in and their neighbors moved out. Racial gregariousness was stronger than economy, so houses went for a song.[3] Enough of them came to Jasper to make him potential potentate of Plum street. But Jasper was slow, not given to show, and contented to be hired.
Mary came to realize that he would only bring the money. She must make the influence. She had received diploma and inspiration from one of those Southern Missionary Schools for colored youth, and she had thoroughly imbibed “money and knowledge will solve the race problem.” [4] In ten years she had made Jasper a contractor. She read, she joined “culture clubs,” she spoke to embroidery clubs on suffrage when it was a much ridiculed subject, she managed Jasper’s business, drew up his contracts, and still found time to keep Eva Lou the best dressed child in Plum street school.
On Plum street as in some other Negro communities color of skin is a determining factor in social position.[5] Mary had cared for that. Jasper was fair and she became fair. From the days of buttermilk and lemon juice to these of scientific “complexion beautifier” she kept watch on herself and Eva Lou.[6] When Eva Lou came back from school in Washington she was whiter and more fashionable than ever; the street wondered, envied, resented.
Gradually Mary grew to feel that the glory of her ambition would come through her daughter. She centered all her love and energies upon Eva Lou—the promise and fulfillment of her life. Occasionally she thought Eva Lou indiscreet in bringing city fashions among small town people, yet she trusted her to have learned on her expensive trips what the great world does. Eva Lou and a few kindred spirits who had ventured far afield—to Chicago and Washington, Boston and New York—had established a clique of those who wore Harper’s Bazaar clothes unadulterated, smoked cigarettes in semi-privacy, and played from house to house. Plum street’s scandalized gossip joyfully reported by Lucy she ascribed to envy. Lucy, black and buxom, hated Eva Lou’s lithe pallor. Mary smiled. Only those in high places are envied.
William Bullard. Portrait of Betty and Willis Coles. Photograph, circa 1902, courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art Museum. Public Domain.
That June morning as she sat at Mother Stewart’s window, she had breathed a sigh of relief. At last, she could relax. Jasper was a thirty-third degree Mason and Eva Lou was engaged to Sargeant Hawkins of Washington.[7]
Then Gordon’s prophecy smashed in upon her soul. For one panic stricken hour she was filled with terror. But the qualities that had fought for her family for twenty-five years came to her rescue. She knew the prophecy was of Eva Lou. And she who had believed implicitly and fearfully set out to give that yellow tree the lie. She shuddered with dread but she would not retract.
“If I tell Babe,” she reasoned, “wor’y will make her sick. I’ll just have to fight it out alone.”
January was here now. Never a winter before had Eva Lou been so plagued with good advice and flannels. At first she had listened civilly but unheedingly. Finally she firmly refused both. She wore as many as she needed. As for spats and rubber—
“Well, I’ll say not. Pumps ah the thing this wintuh. An’ what if I do cough! Ev’rybody’s got a cold this weathuh. You have yuhself.”
Daily tears did not move her. Fear and a hacking cough were breaking the splendid courage of Mary. Plum street, informed by Lucy, waited the prophecy’s fulfillment in sympathetic certainty.
Down the street Mary saw Dr. Dancey’s car come slowly rolling. She had heard him say flu and pneumonia were rampant again. Suppose Eva should get either! She could not recover. That yellow tree would win and life come crashing to her feet.
“I’ll just have to take care of myself and get rid o’ this grip I have—”[8]
Dr. Dancey was stopping at her door and helping Eva Lou alight.
“O Babe!” Mary cried as she dragged her unwilling body to the door and snatched it open. “Babe, are you sick? Are y’sick?”
Dr. Dancey tried to quiet her. Eva Lou had an attack of grip—nothing more. A hot bath, hot drink, and long night’s sleep would set her right. Mary knew he lied. Grip did not make you look as Babe did. Mary knew for days that the aching limbs and throbbing head she had were signs of grip. When she asked Babe she said she just felt weak.
After Jasper and Eva Lou were asleep, Mary lay in bed and racked her fevered brain for means to thwart the threatening evil. Ah—the sure solution shone clear before her. Her tortured mind felt free and calm. A smile of cunning triumph crept over her face. She eased out of bed, slipped on her flannelette kimono and bedroom slippers. She crept in to look at Babe. She stared, then stooped and kissed the girl’s hot lips. Sweet little Babe! Mother would save her. She raised her head and smiled in calm defiance across the sleeping girl at the shrouded figure of the waiting Death Angel near the window. Not yet would it get her!
She smiled with cunning triumph again at the silent figure. Why didn’t it move? She knew. It was sorry. It had come in vain.
Down the back stairs and into Jasper’s tool room she floated. All pain had left her. Her thinking was clear and her body light as air. As she bent over the tool box she chuckled. She had never felt so certain of success since the day she married Jasper. Softly she drew out the bright, keen saw. In the kitchen she stopped for salt to sprinkle on the ice. She might slip. She floated around the house and to the youngest maple. Carefully she anointed its ice covered trunk and limbs with salt. Every crackle of the melting ice brought joy to her heart. When she felt a bare wet space on the tree she began sawing—haltingly, unrhythmically. Over and over she whispered exultantly.
“The yellow tree lied! The yellow tree lied!”
Once she stopped to wonder why she was not cold, but she was so light and warm it seemed a waste of time. Not even her feet were cold.
The saw was almost through the tree. She raised herself to gloat over its fall.
But it was not a tree. It was that same Angel of Death. The laugh froze in her throat. His face was uncovered and he was smiling. He swayed toward her once —twice. Suppose he should rush over her and get Babe anyway! She laughed now— sweet, carefree. She still would win. She would hold him—if it were forever. The Angel swayed again and fell into her outstretched arms. They held each other.
Early in the morning slow moving Jasper found her there on the ice with the tree over her.
They buried her yesterday. Eva Lou wore white mourning. Lucy, voicing the query of Plum street, asked Reverend Gordon why the yellow tree took the wrong one.
Anne Brigman. The Heart of the Storm. Print, 1914, The J. Paul Getty Museum, LA, Gift of the Michael and Jane Wilson Collection. Public Domain.
BUSEY, DEREATH BYRD. “THE YELLOW TREE: A STORY.” THE CRISIS 24, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1922): 253-56.
Jun Fujita. Couple Moving During the 1919 Chicago Race Riots. Photographic print, 1919, Chicago History Museum. Public Domain.
[1] A likely reference to the Great Migration (1910-1970), one of the largest movements of people within the United States. Almost six million African American southerners moved to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states to escape racial violence and pursue better opportunities.
[2] In the year 1919, a particularly brutal outburst of violence against African Americans across the United States became what we know now as the Red Summer.
[3] “White flight,” which refers to the movement of white city residents to the suburbs to escape the influx of minorities, explains why racial gregariousness would have caused house prices to drop in African American neighborhoods. Redlining and blockbusting promoted a wave of “white flight” to the suburbs after World War II; however, a new study suggests that “white flight” really started during the first decades of the twentieth century.
[4] During Reconstruction (1863-1877), missionary societies and African Americans established over 3,000 schools in the South for the pubic education of freedmen.
[5] Colorism, which refers to the prejudice against dark skin, is prevalent within African American communities.
[6] In her essay “Black No More: Skin Bleaching and the Emergence of New Negro Womanhood Beauty Culture,” Treva B. Lindsey connects the popularity of bleaching products and procedures in African American communities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to “perceived and real desires for social mobility and aesthetic valuation within a cultural hierarchy premised upon white cultural supremacy.”
Illustration From a Prince Hall Masonic Convention, 1920. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
[7] Jasper Hunley probably belonged to the Prince Hall Masons, a Masonic lodge for African American men that dates back to 1787. Due to racism and segregation, African Americans could not join most Masonic lodges until the late twentieth century. The thirty-third degree is an honorary Masonic degree.
[8] The grip is a common name for epidemic influenza (flu).
Contexts
Original cover from The Crisis‘ number that included “The Yellow Tree.”
Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.
In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”
The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.
exodus: The departure or going out, usually of a body of persons from a country for the purpose of settling elsewhere. Also, the title of the book of the Old Testament which relates the departure of the Israelites out of Egypt.
for a song: For a mere trifle, for little or nothing.
Odilon Redon. The Seashell. Pastel, 1912, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. Public Domain.
Fair, fragile Una, golden-haired,
With melancholy, dark gray eyes,
Sits on a rock by laughing waves,
Gazing into the radiant skies;
And holding to her ear a shell,
A rosy shell of wondrous form;
Quite plaintively to her it coos
Marvelous lays of sea and storm.
It whispers of a fairy home
With coral halls and pearly floors,
Where mermaids clad in glist’ning gold
Guard smilingly the jeweled doors.
She listens and her weird gray eyes
Grow weirder in their pensive gaze.
The sea birds toss her tangled curls,
The skiff lights glimmer through the haze.
Oh, strange sea-singer! what has lent
Such fascination to thy spell?
Is some celestial guardian
Prisoned within thee, tiny shell?
The maid sits rapt until the stars
In myriad shining clusters gleam;
“Enchanted Una,” she is called
By boatmen gliding down the stream.
The tempest beats the restless seas,
The wind blows loud, fierce from the skies;
Sweet, sylph-like Una clasps the shell,
Peace brooding in her quiet eyes.
The wind blows wilder, darkness comes,
The rock is bare, night birds soar far;
Thick clouds scud o’er the gloomy heav’ns
Unvisited by any star.
Where is quaint Una? On some isle,
Dreaming ‘mid music, may she be?
Or does she listen to the shell
In coral halls within the sea?
The boatmen say on stormy nights
They see rare Una with the shell,
Sitting in pensive attitude,
Is it a vision? Who can tell?
Winslow Homer. A Swell of the Ocean. Watercolor over Graphite on Wove Paper, 1883, Fine-Arts Museum of San Francisco. Public Domain.
RAY, H. CORDELIA. “THE ENCHANTED SHELL,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 63-5. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
Contexts
Ray’s poem was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
lay: A short lyric or narrative poem intended to be sung.
scud: To run or move briskly or hurriedly; to dart nimbly from place to place. Also, to sail or move swiftly on the water. Now chiefly (and in technical nautical use exclusively), to run before a gale with little or no sail.
skiff: A small seagoing boat, adapted for rowing and sailing.
Resources for Further Study
Read other poems by H. Cordelia Ray at the Poetry Foundation‘s website.
H. Cordelia Ray’s father, Charles Bennett Ray (1807-1886), was a member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, “conductor” of the Underground Railroad, and editor of The Colored American newspaper (1837-1841).
Winslow Homer. Light Blue Sea at Prout’s Neck. Watercolor on paper, c. 1893-94, Hirsch & Adler Galleries. Public Domain.
It’s a long way the sea-winds blow
Over the sea-plains blue,—
But longer far has my heart to go
Before its dreams come true.
It’s work we must, and love we must,
And do the best we may,
And take the hope of dreams in trust
To keep us day by day.
It’s a long way the sea-winds blow—
But somewhere lies a shore—
Thus down the tide of Time shall flow
My dreams forevermore.
BRAITHWAITE, WILLIAM STANLEY. “IT’S A LONG WAY,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 181-82. NEW YORK: HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
Contexts
Braithwaite’s poem was included in The Upward Path: A Reader for Colored Children, published in 1920 and compiled by Myron T. Pritchard and Mary White Ovington. The volume’s foreword states that, “to the present time, there has been no collection of stories and poems by Negro writers, which colored children could read with interest and pleasure and in which they could find a mirror of the traditions and aspirations of their race.”
Resources for Further Study
Find other poems by William Stanley Braithwaite at Poets.org.
Plowing in South Carolina. Original illustration by James E.Taylor from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 23, no. 577 October 1866): 6. Library of Congress. Public Domain.
God washes clean the souls and hearts of you,
His favored ones, whose backs bend o'er the soil,
Which grudging gives to them requite for toil
In sober graces and in vision true.
God places in your hands the pow'r to do
A service sweet. Your gift supreme to foil
The bare-fanged wolves of hunger in the moil
Of Life's activities. Yet all too few
Your glorious band, clean sprung from Nature's heart;
The hope of hungry thousands, in whose breast
Dwells fear that you should fail. God placed no dart
Of war within your hands, but pow'r to start
Tears, praise, love, joy, enwoven in a crest
To crown you glorious, brave ones of the soil.
DUNBAR-NELSON, ALICE. “TO THE NEGRO FARMER OF THE UNITED STATES,” IN THE DUNBAR SPEAKER AND ENTERTAINER, ED. ALICE MOORE DUNBAR-NELSON, 240. NAPERVILLE, ILL: J. L. NICHOLS & CO., 1920.
Contexts
The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer‘s dedication reads: “To the children of the race which is herein celebrated, this book is dedicated, that they may read and learn about their own people.” In the foreword, Leslie Pinckney Hill, an African American educator, writer, and community leader who graduated from Harvard University in 1903, criticizes the one-sidedness of prevailing reading courses: “In vain may you search their pages—those pages upon which all our reading has been founded—for anything other than a patronizing view of that vast, brooding world of colored folk—yellow, black and brown—which comprises by far the largest portion of the human family.” Hill further writes that Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s book seeks to prove “that the white man has no fine quality, either by heart or mind, which is not shared by his black brother.”
Think of reading this poem out loud. Elocution (or public speaking) was a highly valued and widely taught skill in nineteenth-century America. In her introduction to the Dunbar Speaker, Alice Dunbar-Nelson offers some advice: “Before you begin to learn anything to recite, first read it over and find out if it fires you with enthusiasm. If it does, make it a part of yourself, put yourself in the place of the speaker whose words you are memorizing, get on fire with the thought, the sentiment, the emotion–then throw yourself into it in your endeavor to make others feel as you feel, see as you see, understand what you understand. Lose yourself, free yourself from physical consciousness, forget that those in front of you are a part of an audience, think of them as some persons whom you must make understand what is thrilling you–and you will be a great speaker.”
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
moil: Toil, labour, drudgery.
Resources for Further Study
After the Civil War (1861-1865) and the subsequent abolition of slavery, former slaves were notoriously promised “forty acres and a mule” as a compensation for their unpaid work during slavery. Ultimately, this attempted redistribution failed and by the end of the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) lands were returned to their previous white owners.
A timeline of interactions between black farmers and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) from 1920 to 2021.
Contemporary Connections
A profile on John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmer’s Association, highlights the discrimination that Black American farmers still face today. According to the article, “the number of black farmers in America peaked in 1920,” at around the same time Dunbar Nelson’s poem appeared in print.
