A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Classics 19th Century 20th Century African American Literature  1 min

The Song of the Smoke

W.E.B Du Bois

W.E.B Du Bois

American scholar, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, pacifist and writer, W.E.B Du Bois published many articles, poems, novels and speeches which awarded him large recognition after his death. After the US failed to renew his passport, he became a citizen of Ghana in 1963, where he died of old age while working on an encyclopedia of the African diaspora.

I am the smoke king, I am black. I am swinging in the sky, I am ringing worlds on high; I am the thought of the throbbing mills, I am the soul of the Soul toil kills, I am the ripple of trading rills. Up I'm curling from the sod, I am whirling home to God. I am the smoke king, I am black. I am the smoke king, I am black. I am wreathing broken hearts, I am sheathing devils' darts; Dark inspiration of iron times, Wedding the toil of toiling climes, Shedding the blood of bloodless crimes, Down I lower in the blue, Up I tower toward the true. I am the smoke king, I am black. I am the