THE NEW NEGRO
By:
April 25, 2025
A (pro- or anti-) science-, mathematics-, technology-, space-, apocalypse-, dehumanization-, disenchantment-, and/or future-oriented poem published during sf’s emergent Radium Age (c. 1900–1935). Research and selection by Joshua Glenn.
He scans the world with calm and fearless
eyes,
Conscious within of powers long since
forgot;
At every step, new man-made barriers rise
To bar his progress — but he heeds them
not.
He stands erect, though tempests round
him crash,
Though thunder bursts and billows surge
and roll;
He laughs and forges on, while lightnings
flash
Along the rocky pathway to his goal.
Impassive as a Sphinx, he stares ahead —
Foresees new empires rise and old ones
fall;
While caste-mad nations lust for blood to
shed,
He sees God’s finger writing on the wall.
With soul awakened, wise and strong he
stands,
Holding his destiny within his hands.
— Though McCall never published a collection of poems, this one was included in Caroling Dusk (1927), a seminal “Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets” edited by Countee Cullen.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF POETRY: Stephen Spender’s THE PYLONS | George Sterling’s THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS | Archibald MacLeish’s EINSTEIN | Thomas Thornely’s THE ATOM | C.S. Lewis’s DYMER | Stephen Vincent Benét’s METROPOLITAN NIGHTMARE | Robert Frost’s FIRE AND ICE | Aldous Huxley’s FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG | Sara Teasdale’s “THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS” | Edith Södergran’s ON FOOT I HAD TO… | Robert Graves’s WELSH INCIDENT | Nancy Cunard’s ZEPPELINS | D.H. Lawrence’s WELLSIAN FUTURES | & many more.