David X Novak
  • Home
  • About
  • Poetry
  • Plays
  • Prose
  • Books
  • News
  • Contact

W.E.B. Du Bois on the Perils of Propaganda

2/17/2018

 

​“The tragic death of Lincoln has given currency to the theory that the Lincoln policy of Reconstruction would have been far better and more successful than the policy afterward pursued. If it is meant by this that Lincoln would have more carefully followed public opinion and worked to adjust differences, this is true. But Abraham Lincoln himself could not have settled the question of Emancipation, Negro citizenship and the vote, without tremendous difficulty.

“First of all he was bitterly hated by the overwhelming mass of Southerners. Mark Pomeroy, a Northern Copperhead, voiced the extreme Southern opinion when he wrote:

“ ‘It is you Republicans who set up at the head of the nation a hideous clown ... who became a shameless tyrant, a tyrant justly felled by an avenging hand, and who now rots in his tomb while his poisonous soul is consumed by the eternal flames of hell.’

“Even conservative Southern papers continually referred to Lincoln as a ‘gorilla’ or a ‘clown.’ And when we consider the fact that Lincoln was determined upon real freedom for the Negro, upon his education, and at least a restricted right to vote, it is difficult to see how the South could have been brought to agreement with him.

“In the South there was absence of any leadership corresponding in breadth and courage to that of Abraham Lincoln. Here comes the penalty which a land pays when it stifles free speech and free discussion and turns itself over entirely to propaganda. It does not make any difference if at the time the things advocated are absolutely right, the nation, nevertheless, becomes morally emasculated and mentally hog-tied, and cannot evolve that healthy difference of opinion which leads to the discovery of truth under changing conditions.”

—WEB Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America

A Southern Gentleman Bemoans His Loss

2/12/2018

 

“We call them stolen property,
    Each woman, man, and child
Formerly safe in slavery,
    In ‘freedom’ now beguiled,

“Stolen by Yankee bayonets,
    The hand of government
Wrenching our purchase, theft which whets
    Malice but rapes consent.

“Deprived of our protective care
    Extinction is their lot,”
Thus spoke a man with savoir faire,
    His voice with anger shot.

“So each and every one of us
    Regard your thieving souls,
As to a banquet sumptuous
    Bring excrement in bowls,

“Leaving behind the stench and smell
    Of refuse, crass and mean,
These ‘freedmen’ you condemn to hell
    And malice whetted keen.”

R.I.P. Moya Moye

2/8/2018

 

He did not bend and was not cowed
    Before intimidation,
Ever a voice which rang out loud,
    A man without a nation— 

Against injustice he stood firm
    And took from Denmark Vesey
The inspiration not to squirm
    Nor take injustice easy— 

Murdered for motives yet unknown
    So Moya Moye passes,
But not curtailed the light that shone,
    As legacy amasses— 

Hence let intimidation stop,
    And with this generation
Fear and hypocrisy let drop:
    We must remake this nation.
    Picture

    News?

    A new poem is always news to the poet.
    ​Or whatever.

    Archives

    April 2020
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed