Artist Unknown. Portrait of a Black Sailor (Paul Cuffe?). Oil on canvas, c. 1880, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Public Domain.
Over the seas to-night, love,
Over the darksome deeps,
Over the seas to-night, love,
Slowly my vessel creeps.
Over the seas to-night, love,
Walking the sleeping foam—
Sailing away from thee, love,
Sailing from thee and home.
Over the seas to-night, love,
Dreaming beneath the spars—
Till in my dreams you shine, love,
Bright as the listening stars.
Braithwaite, william stanley. “Sea Lyric,” IN THE UPWARD PATH: A READER FOR COLORED CHILDREN, ED. MYRON T. PRITCHARD AND MARY WHITE OVINGTON, 189. HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, 1920.
Contexts
This poem appeared 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, “[t]o 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.”
“Sea Lyric” was initially included in Braithwaite’s 1904 poetry book Lyrics of Life and Love, wherein the poem was not segmented into stanzas.
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.”
Cover of a publication of sheet music for “Yes! We Have No Bananas.”
There’s a fruit store on our street It’s run by a Greek. And he keeps good things to eat But you should hear him speak! When you ask him anything, he never answers “no”. He just “yes”es you to death, and as he takes your dough He tells you “Yes, we have no bananas We have-a no bananas today. We’ve string beans, and onions Cabbageses, and scallions, And all sorts of fruit and say We have an old fashioned to-mah-to A Long Island po-tah-to But yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today.”
Business got so good for him that he wrote home today, “Send me Pete and Nick and Jim; I need help right away.” When he got them in the store, there was fun, you bet. Someone asked for “sparrow grass” and then the whole quartet All answered “Yes, we have no bananas We have-a no bananas today. Just try those coconuts Those walnuts and doughnuts There ain’t many nuts like they. We’ll sell you two kinds of red herring, Dark brown, and ball-bearing. But yes, we have no bananas We have no bananas today.”
Yes, we are very sorry to inform you That we are entirely out of the fruit in question The afore-mentioned vegetable Bearing the cognomen “Banana”. We might induce you to accept a substitute less desirable, But that is not the policy at this internationally famous green grocery. I should say not. No no no no no no no. But may we suggest that you sample our five o’clock tea Which we feel certain will tempt your pallet? However we regret that after a diligent search Of the premises By our entire staff We can positively affirm without fear of contradiction That our raspberries are delicious; really delicious Very delicious But we have no bananas today.
Yes, we gotta no banana No banana We gotta no banana today. I sella you no banana. Hey, Marianna, you gotta no banana? Why this man, he no believe-a what I say. Now whatta you want mister? You wanna buy twelve for a quarter? No? well, just a oneofadozen? I’m-a gonna calla my daughter. Hey, Marianna You gotta piana Yes, banana, no No, yes, no bananas today We gotta no bananas. Yes, we gotta no bananas today.
To many, this is simply a goofy, yet catchy song. However, the fact that the fruit stand owner is Greek gives it an interesting place in American history. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a massive surge of Greek immigrants, mostly young men. The 1910s were the peak of Greek immigration, with more than 126,000 Greeks coming to America. From 1920 to 1930, 70,000 more arrived. During this time, Frank Silver stopped by a Greek-owned fruit stand, and the proprietor spoke in the style of the song’s main character.
Greeks in America at that time had faced many hardships. Many of these immigrants came from regions controlled by the Ottoman Empire, such as Macedonia and Crete. The social and economic hardships caused by Ottoman rule, the Balkan Wars, and World War I drove many young Greek men to America seeking income to send home as dowries for their sisters. American capitalists quickly exploited this influx of cheap labor, forcing workers into dirty and sometimes dangerous jobs, like shoveling coal into massive furnaces on the very steamships they rode to get to America.
When Greek immigrants did arrive in America, more obstacles rose before them: the first, Ellis Island. Called by some “the island of tears and fear”, Ellis Island was the gateway to America, and the gate was open only to the healthy, and those who could afford the fees. The Immigration Act of 1917 forbid entry to people with mental illness, as well as epileptics, persons afflicted with tuberculosis, chronic alcoholics, paupers, beggars, vagrants, convicted criminals, polygamists, anarchists, prostitutes, contract laborers, persons who could not read in any language, and many, many other individuals. This law along with immigration quotas, which shrunk dramatically in 1924, made it very difficult for Greeks to enter the country. Pregnant women were also held on the island until after they gave birth so their children would not be citizens: 350 children were born on Ellis Island. Ten times that many died waiting to get into America.
Even after getting into the country, the half-million Greek immigrants who entered the country between 1892 and 1924 did not have it easy. Many Americans called them slurs such as “dirty Greeks” or “greaseballs.” Greeks in the South were subject to the same race laws as African Americans and were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. Frances E. Clark included “Scum of the Earth,” a poem by Robert Haven Shauffler, which mourns the attitude of Americans toward Immigrants, in the introduction of his book Old Homes of New Americans.
Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:
cognomen: a distinguishing name or epithet given to a person or assumed by himself; a nickname.
Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel Zorba the Greek (1946) and the movie by the same name (1964) include reasonably accurate contemporaneous American understanding of Greeks.
Over the years, “Yes We Have No Bananas” has continually appeared in popular culture, including Tender is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Only Angels Have Wings (1939) starring Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, Sabrina (1954) starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, and The Simpsons episode “Bart’s Girlfriend” (November 6, 1994). It has been covered by Bill Murray, Benny Goodman, and Al Jolson (in blackface)as well as many others. In 2020, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend also featured the tune. Irving Cohn’s IMDB page has a comprehensive list of film, television, and audio recordings of the song.
Abbott Handerson Thayer. Blue Jays in Winter. Oil on canvas, 1909, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
When the leaves and flowers are dead,
When the other birds are fled,
When the winter wind is keen,
Then the snow-birds all are seen.
When the flakes are falling fast,
When the forest feels the blast,
When the drifts in circles play,
’Tis the snow-birds’ holiday.
When the earth is covered deep,
When in ice the rivers sleep,
When all other things are sad,
Hark! the snow-birds’ voice is glad!
When the frost is on the pane,
When the wailing winds complain,
When the boys come shivering in,
Hark! the snow-birds’ cheerful din!
But when Spring, ’mid rosy light,
Bids stern Winter take his flight,
The snow-birds, in his stormy train,
Fly northward, where he holds his reign.
author unknown. “The SNow-Bird.” ROBERT MERRY’S MUSEUM 15, no. 2 (February 1848): 64.
Contexts
This poem was published as lyrics to a song, and the melody was included in the original printing.
This was not the only song with “snow-bird” in the title, as Francis C. Woodworth (lyrics) and Susanna Newbold (music) published “The Song of the Snow-Bird” in the January 1858 edition — a popular song that also appeared in other periodicals.
The image included above this poem is from Abbott Handerson Thayer’s book Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. Here is the label underneath this painting, which is located at the Luce Center in the Smithsonian American Art Museum:
“In 1909, Abbott Handerson Thayer and his son, Gerald, published a controversial book titled Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, offering their theory of animal camouflage. Thayer believed that the coloration of animals, no matter how eye-catching, was meant to disguise them in nature through what he called ‘countershading.’ Even bright pink flamingoes would vanish against a similar colored sky at sunset or sunrise. No matter that at times their brilliant feathers were highly visible, their coloration would protect them from predators at crucial moments so that ‘the spectator seems to see right through the space occupied by an opaque animal.'”
“Not all readers were convinced. The most passionate criticism came from Teddy Roosevelt, who was in Africa when the book came out. He protested upon his return that Thayer’s theory was ludicrous, arguing that on his trip he had spotted some of the animals Thayer mentioned from miles away. Roosevelt’s challenge sparked a heated debate between the two men. Roosevelt wrote a 112-page article refuting Thayer’s ideas; Thayer repeatedly invited Roosevelt to his home in New Hampshire, hoping to demonstrate his theories, but Roosevelt always refused (Nemerov, “Vanishing Americans: Abbott Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Attraction of Camouflage,” American Art, Summer 1997).”
Resources for Further Study
For background on the children’s magazine Robert Merry’s Museum, visit Pat Pflieger’s website.
Original explanation of nighttime ritual for Zuni mothers and their infants, along with the lullaby lyrics.
The Zuni mother, unlike her white sister, does not put her baby to sleep by singing a Lullaby [sic] to it, or rocking it in a cradle, or carrying it about in her arms. She simply lays it in a hammock, places her hand affectionately on top of its head and gazes at it with an intent, steady look, exhorting it in a low voice, half speaking, half singing, to go to sleep. Making a few passes over the child while pronouncing an Incantation, it falls to sleep in a few moments. The Incantation bears the character of an appeal, as in suppressed murmurs she urges the child to close its eyes, at the same time gently covering its eyelids with her fingertips. While still continuing her steady gaze into its eyes until it is asleep, she repeats soothingly the chant;
“Now rest thee in peace, with thy playmates above; Close thine eyes my baby, Go join in their happy amusements, my love, Sleep on, soundly, sweetly, etc.”
When asleep, the Zunis believe the spirit is temporarily freed from the body and enters into happy communion with the good spirits of the other world.
Troyer, Carlos. “Zunian Lullaby.” Traditional Songs of the zunis. (Newton Center, MA: Wa-wan press, 1904), 4-5.
[1] In Troyer’s time, the tilde was commonly used when writing the word “Zuni.” However, it is not used anymore, hence its absence on this page.
Contexts
Troyer’s arrangement of “Zunian Lullaby” appears to only have been recorded by one artist, pianist Dario Müller. The song appears on Müller’s album The American Indianists, Vol. 2, which was released by Marco Polo Records in 1996.
Resources for Further Study
It is important to recognize the limitations of Troyer’s work and experience. Because the recording above does not have lyrics, and the lyrics provided by Troyer are in English, a more accurate rendition of a Zuni lullaby may be this one, performed by Laughing Eyes (Margaret Eagle, or Margaret Lewis, per the Library of Congress).
To learn more about the Zuni (a Pueblo people), their Nation’s website is good place to start.
Katy Strand designed this fantastic resource for the Smithsonian to teach about Zuni music (including lullabies), including several lessons, recordings, and assessments.
The National Parks Service has some lesson plans that explore present-day Pueblo who live near the Bandelier National Monument area. Of course, it’s imperative to also consider the ways in which national parks and monuments have affected Native communities.
Winslow Homer. The Songs of the War, from Harper’s Weekly, November 23, 1861. Wood engraving on paper, 1861, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Winslow Homer. Thanksgiving in Camp, from Harper’s Weekly, November 29, 1862. Wood engraving on paper, 1862, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C. Frederic Edwin Church. Aurora Borealis. Oil on canvas, 1865, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Howe, julia ward. “battle hymn of the republic.” THE atlantic monthly9, NO. 52 (february 1862): 10.
Contexts
Julia Ward Howe was a writer and abolitionist who co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Association. Despite her husband’s insistence that she remain busy keeping the home rather than writing poetry and the marital strife caused in part by her successful 1853 publication Passion-Flowers, Howe continued to write and eventually penned one of the most well-known American war poems.
