[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.

I was reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage.

If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:/ To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

We were not made to eternally weep.

We shall not always plant while others reap