My
roots are deep in southern life; deeper than John Brown or Nat Turner
or Robert Lee. I was sired and weaned in a tropic world. The palm tree
and banana leaf, mango and coconut, breadfruit and rubber trees know me.
Warm skies and gulf blue streams are in my blood. I belong with the
smell of fresh pine, with the trail of coon, and the spring growth of
wild onion.
I am no hothouse bulb to be reared in steam-heated flats with the music
of El and subway in my ears, walled in by steel and wood and brick far
from the sky.
I want the cotton fields, tabacco and the cane. I want to walk along
with sacks of seed to drop in fallow ground. Restless music is in my
heart and I am eager to be gone.
O Southland, sorrow home, melody beating in my bone and blood! How long
will the Klan of hate, the hounds and the chain gangs keep me from my
own?
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