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Famous Lynched Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Lynched poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lynched poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lynched poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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...er's leg.
There is the hand of Robeson
Langston's thigh
Zora's arm and hair
Your grandfather's lifted chin
And lynched woman's elbow
What you've tried to forget
Of your grandmother's frown.


Each one, pull one back into the sun


We who have stood over
So many graves
Know that no matter what they do
All of us must live
Or none. ...Read more of this...
by Walker, Alice



...Oh when I think of my long-suffering race,
For weary centuries despised, oppressed,
Enslaved and lynched, denied a human place
In the great life line of the Christian West;
And in the Black Land disinherited,
Robbed in the ancient country of its birth,
My heart grows sick with hate, becomes as lead,
For this my race that has no home on earth.
Then from the dark depths of my soul I cry
To the avenging angel to consume
The white man's world of wonders...Read more of this...
by McKay, Claude
...
And armed the Rich to loot the Dead;   
Worshipped the whores of Hollywood   
Where once the Virgin Mary stood 
And lynched the Christ. 

Awake, awake, O sleeping world   
Honor the sun; 

Worship the stars, those vaster suns   
Who rule the night 
Where black is bright 
And all unselfish work is right   
And Greed is Sin. 

And Africa leads on:   
Pan Africa!...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...njo in Shay's Saloon;
From the no-good ****** who runned away
After stickin' his knife into ol' man Shay.

They's a lynched me, for he was white,
But he raped my sister one Sunday night;
So I did what a proper man should do,
And I sunk his body deep in the slough.
Oh, he taunted me to my dark disgrace,
Called me a ******, spat in my face;
So I buried my jack-knife in his heart,
Laughin' to see the hot blood start;
Laughin' still, though it's long ago,
And nobody's eve...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...They would have lynched me
Had I not been secretly hurried away
To the jail at Peoria.
And yet I was going peacefully home,
Carrying my jug, a little drunk,
When Logan, the marshal, halted me,
Called me a drunken hound and shook me,
And, when I cursed him for it, struck me
With that Prohibition loaded cane --
All this before I shot him.
They would have hanged me exc...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee



...got soaking wet.

From then on out, I received a sour look every time I

passed her house. I was lucky I wasn't lynched.

 I didn't work for the old lady in the winter. I'd finish the

year by the last of October, raking up leaves or somethin

or transporting the last muttering gartersnake to winter

quarters in the old ladies' toothbrush Valhalla across the

street.

 Then she'd call me on the telephone in the spring. I would

always be surprised to h...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...to-hand fight,
And drinking whisky, and singing wild songs, oh! what a shameful sight!
But a number of the thieves were lynched and shot
For robbing the dead of their valuables, which will not be forgot. 

Mrs Ogle, like a heroine, in the telegraph office stood at her post,
And wired words of warning, else more lives would have been lost;
Besides she was warned to flee, but from her work she wouldn't stir,
Until at last the merciless flood engulfed her. 

And as for t...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz
...breeds
And civilized their dead,
Raping red rubber, diamonds, cocoa, gold!
For this, too, once, and in Thy Name,
I lynched a ******—
(He raved and writhed,
I heard him cry,
I felt the life-light leap and lie,
I saw him crackle there, on high,
I watched him wither!)
Thou?
Thee?
I lynched Thee?
Awake me, God! I sleep!
What was that awful word Thou saidst?
That black and riven thing—was it Thee?
That gasp—was it Thine?
This pain—is it Thine?
Are, then, these b...Read more of this...
by Du Bois, W. E. B.

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