Textual History

This poem also appear in The Liberator (July, 1921): [*] Claude McKay Enslaved The Liberator (July, 1921): 6 .

Notes

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Formats

Enslaved

  1. Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,*

  2. For weary centuries despised, oppressed,

  3. Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place

  4. In the great life line of the Christian West;

  5. And in the Black Land disinherited,

  6. Robbed in the ancient country of its birth, *

  7. My heart grows sick with hate, becomes as lead,

  8. For this my race that has no home on earth my race, my race, outcast upon the earth* .

  9. Then from the dark depths of my soul I cry

  10. To the avenging angel to consume

  11. The white man's world of wonders utterly:

  12. Let it be swallowed up in earth's vast womb,

  13. Or upward roll as sacrificial smoke

  14. To liberate my people from its yoke!

Contents:

Harlem Shadows (1922)

Additional Poems by Claude McKay

Contemporary Reviews

Supplementary Texts