In February 1899, British novelist and poet
Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The
United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged
the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other
European nations. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and
then president, described it as “rather poor poetry, but good sense from
the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed
as Roosevelt. African Americans, among many others, objected to the
notion of the “white man’s burden.” Among the dozens of replies to
Kipling’s poem was “The Black Man’s Burden,” written by African-American
clergyman and editor H. T. Johnson and published in April 1899. A
“Black Man’s Burden Association” was even organized with the goal of
demonstrating that mistreatment of brown people in the Philippines was
an extension of the mistreatment of black Americans at home.
Pile on the Black Man’s Burden.
'Tis nearest at your door;
Why heed long bleeding Cuba,
or dark Hawaii’s shore?
Hail ye your fearless armies,
Which menace feeble folks
Who fight with clubs and arrows
and brook your rifle’s smoke.
Pile on the Black Man’s Burden
His wail with laughter drown
You’ve sealed the Red Man’s problem,
And will take up the Brown,
In vain ye seek to end it,
With bullets, blood or death
Better by far defend it
With honor’s holy breath.
Source: H.T. Johnson, “The Black Man’s Burden,” Voice of Missions, VII (Atlanta: April 1899), 1. Reprinted in Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden, 1898–1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 1975, 183–184.
