Panther


PANTHER POETRY

Poetry by Dr. Tolbert Small


America

We are America:

We who mop the floors,
We who pick the cotton,
We who farm the valleys.


We are America:

The sharecropper who plowed his mule,
The ironworker who forged his steel,
The women who bore our children.


We are America:

The Chinese men who built the railroads,
The Yiddish men who passed through Ellis Island,
The Redmen who lived here first.


We are America:

The slaves who chopped and picked your cotton,
The Black faces who nursed your babies and scrubbed your floors.
Though we were the other America,

We are still America.

We are America:

We pray to Christ,
We pray to Allah,
We pray to Jehovah,
We pray for humanity.

We are America.

-- Tolbert Small