“How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking ‘neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?”
This poem, titled “To America,” was written in 1916 by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), a black writer, artist, and NAACP activist most famous for the 1899 poem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” which was set to music by his brother and became unofficially known as the black national anthem.
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