Cease to Agitate
This poem/song comes from the website Art and Theology, the link to which is below. It is a fitting first post for Black History Month. The words are daunting and painful. They remind me of the words of Msimangu in Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, the story of the lives and culture destroyed by apartheid in South Africa in the 20th century. Msimangu, a loving mission priest in Johannesburg, says "My greatest fear is that when they are turned to loving, we will be turned to hating." When will we cease to agitate...not they, but we?
Song of the Agitators
“Cease to agitate!” we will,
When the slave whip’s sound is still;
When no more on guiltless limb
Fetters print their circlet grim;
When no hound athirst for blood
Scours the thorny Georgian wood;
When no mother’s pleading prayer,
On the sultry Southern air,
Quivereth out in accents wild,
“Master, give me back my child!”
In the day when men shall be
Brethren, equal-born, and free—
Day for which we work and wait—
We will “cease to agitate”!
When our statute books proclaim
To the world no more our shame,
And a freeman’s rights shall hold
Dearer than the Judas gold;
When the Polar Star shall give
Light to the last fugitive;
When our border lakes shall rise
On the last lone bondman’s eyes,
And their waves for him no more
Haste to clasp the Northern shore;
In the day when men shall be
Brethren, equal-born, and free—
Day for which we work and wait—
We will “cease to agitate”!
Written by an anonymous abolitionist during the days of race-based chattel slavery in the United States, this poem was originally published in the Ohio Star (Ravenna, OH) in 1852 and was reprinted shortly after in the Anti-Slavery Bugle (Oct. 9, 1852) (Lisbon, OH), the Liberator (Nov. 19, 1852) (Boston), and the Voice of the Fugitive (Dec. 16, 1852) (Windsor, Ontario).