Let us give thanks to God above,
Thanks for expressions of His love,
Seen in the book of nature, grand
Taught by His love on every hand.

Let us be thankful in our hearts,
Thankful for all the truth imparts,
For the religion of our Lord,
All that is taught us in His word.

Let us be thankful for a land,
That will for such religion stand;
One that protects it by the law,
One that before it stands in awe.

Thankful for all things let us be,
Though there be woes and misery;
Lessons they bring us for our good-
Later 'twill all be understood.

Thankful for peace o'er land and sea,
Thankful for signs of liberty,
Thankful for homes, for life and health,
Pleasure and plenty, fame and wealth.

Thankful for friends and loved ones, too,
Thankful for all things, good and true,
Thankful for harvest in the fall,
Thankful to Him who gave it all.

The Negro Ballot

Can America be reckoned as the country of the free?
In the light of recent actions 'tis a truth that's hard to see.
It has taken from the Negro his protection, yea, his vote,
How oppressive is the finger that such cruel mandates wrote!

'Equal rights are not for Negroes; they shall never have a vote,
To supremacy of white man shall be raised the highest note.
Keep the black man from the ballot and we'll treat him as we please,
With no means for his protection, we will rule with perfect ease.'

Those are words of Southern white men, backed, it seems, by all the land,
From the blacks they'll take the ballot, with their rights on every hand;
O, the maladministration in enforcement of the ills,
Thus they re-enslave the Negro till their cup of evil fills.

When appeal is made to Congress for protection of a race,
They will promptly dodge the issue, saying,'This is not the place;
In the courts alone there's power to decide it for a fact,'
'We evade it,' says the court-room, 'Congress has the power to act.'

So when Negroes cry for justice in this commonwealth of ours,
There is none to give an answer, none to regulate the powers,
Congress claims no jurisdiction, and the courts declare the same,
None in all this Christian nation who will face the load of shame.

More than all the host of Egypt or the Canaanites of old,
Were the Jews when God was captain of the army, we are told.
Stronger than the ancient mountain of the waters of the sea,
Nature hastened to the rescue, making all opposers flee.

Though Elisha, when at Dothan, was encompassed round about,
By the forces of Benhadad, as he put the Jews to rout,
His protection came from heaven in the chariots of fire,
Yea, the angels and the horses told the earth of heaven's ire.

When for God and fight we battle, numbers cannot make a mark,
For while countless millions perished, eight were saved in Noah's ark.
'Twas the faithful few, my readers, who were found on holy ground,
That were saved, while all remaining in the raging flood were drowned.

Tell me not of shame or failure in a just and righteous cause,
For the right at length will triumph in the face of wicked laws,
Heaven still extends protection to the weakened and oppressed,
Who will cry to God for succor and relief when sore distressed.

Yea, the angel still encampeth round about when Christians fear,
To deliver them from evil and their souls to fill with cheer.
With the faith of ancient Hebrews should the Negro of today,
Ask the Maker for the ballot, and with courage wend his way.

If a fervent prayer is offered by a race ten million strong,
Telling of discrimination, persecution, hate, and wrong,
God will hasten to the rescue and the ballot will restore,
And reclaim for Negro manhood, equal justice evermore.

Injustice Of The Courts

Whites alone upon the jury in a number of the states,
Thus they crush a helpless Negro with their prejudicial hates;
Legal ills they thrust upon him, and the tale is passing sad—
Equal rights with white men? Never! Color-phobia makes them mad.

'Tis the training of the children, every Negro to suppress,
They their spleen may vent upon him and he happy, none the less,
They will boast aloud in anger if by Negroes they are crossed,
'If we shoot or kill a Negro, not a cent will be the cost.'

Juries represent the people and their sentiments make known,
When a Negro comes in question there's discrimination shown.
They are bold to make assertion that they will not do the same
For a Negro as a white man, and no feeling comes of shame.

Jurymen have made confession after trial had been made
Of a Negro, and 'He's guilty!' was the verdict there displayed.
Stern remorse so touched the conscience, they the story did relate,
How the verdict they had rendered was to stay the dying fate.

'It was hard to say him guilty, for the man, we thought, was clear.
But a mob was making clamors that were terrible to hear.'
'Punishment or death!' it shouted, and around began to press;
And of two impending evils, we have chosen him the less.

Thus we legalized the lynchers, we their words to court have brought,
And the innocent convicted! how revolting is the thought!
When a mob has forced a jury to a stand against the right,
All the waters of the ocean cannot make the conscience white.


Once a Negro girl was saucy, and the wife the husband told,
Who in haste arraigned the servant and began to swear and scold.
Then he whipped her without mercy—straightway she to law applied.
Passing strange—they found him guilty, and the judge was sorely tried.
This he said, in making sentence, 'No disfavor comes to you,
You have only done as others, or as I myself would do,
If your servants vex the mistress, thrash them out again, I say,
Go to jail ten minutes only, and a fine of five cents pay!'
If a judge is conscientious, then the people vote him out,
His partiality to white men they must know, beyond a doubt.
No equality for Negroes in the law the world must know,
If he fails to make distinctions, from the bench they'll have him go.
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This injustice is a cancer, in the nation's breast it lives,
Quietly and unmolested, awful is the death it gives.
It results from color-phobia, which the God of right defies,
Slaves of prejudice, take warning! pause before the nation dies.
All the land is running riot, laws are trampled in the face,
Negroes must be law-abiding; whites alone the laws debase.
Wrong upon itself is coiling, hissing serpent of the times,
Whites in self-defense are crying, 'Shield us from our people's crimes.'
Barbarism fills the country, all for safety take alarm,
From the lowest to the highest, no one now is free from harm;
Anarchy is rife among us, all resulting from the same,
Gross injustice of the court-room brings the nation into shame.
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Lawlessness is at a premium, woeful penalty it brings,
Relic of the middle ages is the present state of things.
To the winds we now are sowing, and the whirl-wind comes at length,
Evils cast upon the waters come again with added strength.

Have you heard, my friend, the slander that the Negro has to face?
Immorality, the grossest, has been charged up to his race.
Listen, listen to my story, as I now proceed to tell
Of conditions in the Southland, where the mass of Negroes dwell.

Ev'ry city, town or county, ev'ry state on Southern soil,
Has mulattoes in its borders, found among the sons of toil.
Can you tell from whence they landed; or to whither shall they go?
Is the Negro race responsible alone, I'd like to know?

When a man among the Negroes is the least suspected there
Of an intimate relation with a daughter that is fair,
Then an angry mob arises and he answers for the same
In a death, the worst in cruelty the company can name.

Though the noonday sun is shining at the time the lynching's done,
Still the officers of justice can't detect a single one,
Who partook in Negro killing, for the deed no one is blamed,
And inside the nation's senate comes a voice, 'We're not ashamed.'

Is the same true when a white man leads a Negro girl astray?
When he takes away her virtue, is the same true? tell me, pray,
Do the press and pulpit clamor or condemn the mighty wrong?
Is there sentiment against it? is the burden of my song.

When the case is thus presented, they are silent as the grave,
And the law at once is powerless a Negro's name to save,
So you see the same continues and the truth is like a flood,
That in veins of Southern Negroes flow the best of Southern blood.

Can you tell of these mulattoes, did they fall here from the sky?
How is this that they're among us? can you tell the reason why?
Who's to blame for their existence? is the Negro race alone?
If there are such freaks in nature it is time to make them known.

'Tis a custom born of slavery when master's law and might,
Was enforced upon the bondsman without question of the right,
And the parson preached on Sunday how the servant should obey
All the mandates of the master, let them be whate'er they may.

O, how sad the tales of bondage when persuasive measures failed,
How they tortured Negro women till their hellish plans prevailed!
Women faithful to their virtue were as martyrs sent to rest,
Others yielded to the tempter, weary, helpless and distressed.

So the spirit lives at present for the master hand to rule,
Cook or washer, nurse or housemaid passes through this training school,
Lo! the greatest of temptations, men and devils there invent,
And present them to the servants, on their ruin so intent.

There's no friend to whom the dusky maiden can appeal for aid,
To the mistress of the home to speak of such she is afraid,
In the law there's no protection that a Negro girl can claim,
None to rescue, none to pity, so she enters into shame.

Now reflect for just a moment, in the light of what you see,
Which is worse, to yield the tempter or the evil one to be?
Can you still believe that Negroes are immoral more than whites?
O, how different the picture if the Negro had his rights!

There's a God who rules in justice, one who feels his children's pain,
So we know that sin and darkness cannot always hope to reign,
All the ills to Negro women will the Father bring to light,
For the Judge, the only Judge of all creation will do right.