Clara Burrill Bruce - We Who Are Dark (1918)

Forgotten Poems #102

    
             —: We Who Are Dark :—

       We who are dark
       And know the lash
       On bodies worn,
       Insensate made
       Through years of wrong;
       That feel no more
       The scourge, the whip—
       We who are dark
       And know the hurt
       Of pitiless scorn
       On souls that live
       And feel the dart
       And thrust of wrong;
       The greedy glance
       Of sinful lust—
       We who are dark
       And know the urge
       Of blinding rage
       And fury red.
       That eats and burns;
       The ache of hands

       Pressed on by hearts
       On vengeance bent—
       We've won your praise
       That side by side
       With those who taught
       Us all our woes
       We bravely march
       Nor backward glance.
       Not hesitant,
       Nor slow, but with
       Quickening tread
       Old wrongs, old sores
       Forgotten lie;
       Brothers-in-arms,
       As we march forth
       To victory,
       Bearing aloft
       To foreign lands
       A freedom sweet
       That's not our own.
    

Louise Latimer (The Crisis, March 1917)

Clara Burrill Bruce (1879-1947) was; “A graduate with high honors from the Boston University School of Law, and was admitted to the Massachusetts State Bar examination in 1926. She is the second African American woman to do so.” (The Crisis, 1926) “Won distinction at Boston University by being elected editor of the university law journal.” (Opportunity, 1926)

“Bruce was the Assistant Resident Manager and Director of Welfare Services at the Paul Laurence Dunbar Apartments in Harlem, NYC, starting in August, 1927. She was also the Associate Editor of the Dunbar News from 1929 to 1934.” (‘Memorandum’, in the W.E.B. De Bois Papers) She would go on to co-found the Harlem Congressional League and the National Council of Negro Women in the 1930s. While this is Bruce’s only published poem, like Fenton Johnson, she stands as a significant forerunner to the Harlem renaissance.

Illustrations by Frank Walts (The Crisis, June 1918).

    
              —: After Clara Burrill :—
                       by Dick Whyte

       word
          |
          |    from the dark
          |    light
          |    from the light
          |    shade
          |    from the shade
          |
          |    life
          |
       world
    

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