We shall not always plant while others reap
I have a rendezvous with life.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.
The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else.
[W]e have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone.