This poem tells a story of the 1906 Atlanta riots.

Her eyes were gentle, her voice was for soft singing

In the stiff-backed pew, or on the porch when evening

Comes slowly over Atlanta. But she remembered.

She said: “After they cleaned out the saloons and the dives

The drunks and the loafers, the thought that  they had better

Clean out the rest of us. And it was awful.

They snatched men off of streetcars, beat up women.

Some of our men fought back and killed, too. Still

It wasn’t their habit. And then the orders came

For the milishy, and the mob went home,

And dressed up in their soldiers’ uniforms,

And rushed back shooting just as wild as ever.

Some leaders told us to keep  faith in the law,

In the governor; some did not keep that faith,

Some never had it; he was white, too, and the time

Was near election, and the rebs were mad.

He wasn’t stopping hornets with his head bare.

The white folks at the big houses, some of them

Kept all their servants home under protection

But that was all the trouble they could stand.

And some were put out when their cooks and yard-boys

Were thrown from cars and beaten, and came late or not at all.

And the police they helped the mob, and the milishy

They helped the police. And it got worse and worse.

“They broke into groceries, drugstores, barbershops,

it made no difference whether white or black.

They beat a lame bootblack until he died,

They cut an old man open with jackknives

The newspapers named us black brutes and mad dogs.

So they used a gun butt on the president

Of our seminary where a lot of folks

Had set up praying prayers the whole night through.

And then, “she said, “our folks got sick and tired

Of being chased and beaten and shot down.

All of a sudden, one day, they all got sick and tired

The servants they put down their mops and pans

And brooms and hoes and rakes and coachman whips,

Bad niggers stopped their drinking Dago red,

Good Negroes figured they had prayed enough,

All came back home–they had been too long away–

A lot of visitors had been looking for them.

They sat on their front stoops and in their yards,

Not talking much, but ready; their welcome ready:

Their shotguns oiled and loaded on their knees.

 

“And then

There wasn’t any riot anymore.”

 

by Sterling Brown