One of them, a girl named
Matty Smith, approached me in the library one day, introduced herself as
one of the chairmen of the entertainment committee of the First African
Methodist Church, and asked me if I would come and give them a talk the
following Saturday night....
The night came ... I found myself on the platform with the preacher by
my side. They had seated me in the chair of honour.
First the congregation prayed and sang ... such singing, so clear and
soaring and melodious. It rocked the very church, burst out through the
windows in great surges of melody.
I was introduced as their friend, as the coloured man's friend.
I spoke. I read my poems simply and unaffectedly.
Afterward I shook hands all round.
Matty Smith, the negro girl, as black as soot, and thoroughly African,
stood by me as introducer. If I had shut my eyes, her manner of speech
might not have been told from that of any cultured white woman's. She
was as refined and sensitive a human being as I have ever met.
As I walked back to my attic over the plumber shop, it was with head
erect and heaving chest. I deemed myself a champion of the negro race. I
was almost putting myself alongside of Lincoln and John Brown.
Their reason for inviting me was that I had had a scathing poem printed,
in the New York _Independent_, on the lynching of a negro in Lincoln's
home State of Illinois.
Pages:
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426