If We Must Die by Claude McKay

If We Must Die
by: Claude McKay

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

This poem was written as a response to what is known today as the Red Summer.  It was a time in U.S. history during which there were race riots--white supremacists against blacks.  While the factors were many, the number of deaths and the sheer inhumanity of what was happening showed that long before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, the dream of what America was supposed to represent was still not something attainable by black people.

This was published in July 1919 following riots in Jenkins County, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina; and preceded more rioting that dominated the rest of that entire year, the worst of which occurred in the rural areas around Elaine, Arkansas--now known as the Arkansas massacre in which an estimated 100–240 black people and five white people were killed (October 1-2.)

Sadly, these words still resonate today where violence still persists against black people here in America.

This poem is known as an anthem of oppressed people everywhere now, but at the time, it spoke to the very real lawlessness and injustice being perpetrated by the states and the U.S. government while white people murdered black people without impunity.  It exhorted black people to defend themselves--to stand up for themselves, and not simply to endure that injustice and lawlessness, but to fight against it--and rightly so.  For if the law of the land is not the same for all the people of that land, can they in any way be seen as just?

I find myself saddened to know that even now, in the year 2021, we are still fighting that same injustice.  And while our laws serve some justice, we must still protest in the streets; we must still defend ourselves against those with power who believe themselves righteous or beyond the scope of the law.  And the fight of 1919 is still going on today--over a hundred years later.

I wonder if it will ever be done.

But I know that we will never stop fighting back.