The Lynching Victim, “Between the World and Me”
The speaker of this poem describes coming across the scene of a particularly gruesome lynching in the woods. All that is left of the victim is bones within a mound of ashes. The man sees the torn and tattered clothing of the victim, but also tell-tale signs of participants and onlookers. He also sees matches, smells gasoline and notices the lynching tree has been charred. Evidence also indicates the victim was tarred and feathered and set on fire as well as strung up to hang from a tree.
The Georgian, “The Red Clay”
The speaker of this poem is a old man from Georgia who used to be a sharecropper, but left for to go live in the city. The “red clay blues” are an emotional call to home; tired of the cement of city sidewalks he misses that defining Georgia clay. There is another siren calling him home, though: he wants to witness what happens to the landlords of the sharecropper property when “the big storm starts to blow.”
Joe Louis, “King Joe”
“King Joe” is an oddball among the poems written by Wright. Its thirteen stanzas of verse were, in fact, written as lyrics to be matched with music written by legendary composer Count Basie. The first recording of the song was by yet another legendary figure in African-American history: Paul Robeson, the first black actor to ever star in a mainstream Hollywood studio film produced for white audiences. The poetic lyrics are a tribute to not just the status of Louis as arguably the greatest heavyweight champion of all time and athletic celebrity, but as a role mode and ambassador for blacks everywhere.
Richard Wright, “The FB Eye Blues”
This poem is distinctly and inarguably autobiographical. As both a prominent black writer and an avowed support of communism—and especially for the latter—Wright was targeted for near-constant surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover, corrupt Director of the FBI. The poem is rather lighthearted in tone, but the effective use of repetition of certain phrases twice per stanza throughout conveys the tense anxiety and impatience catching fire and slowly rising from simmer to boil.
