Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-jwnkl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T05:25:07.460Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - Anti-Lynching Poetry and the Poetics of Protest

from Part II - New Negro Aesthetics and Transitions in Genre and Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Shirley Moody-Turner
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
Get access

Summary

Although scholarship on anti-lynching literature generally is robust, most focuses on prose and drama. In parallel, although increasing attention is being devoted to turn-of-the-century poetry, this discourse still often diminishes women’s contributions to this oeuvre by denigrating the aesthetic qualities and political intentions of most female poets in this period other than Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Addressing both gaps, this chapter examines anti-lynching verse by three undeservedly little-known authors: Priscilla Jane Thompson (1871–1942), Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (1870–1922), and Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer (1868–1936). All have been nearly ignored, except for discussions of their dialect poetry. Yet close attention to examples of their formalist verse demonstrates that these poets were not anomalies in their era and instead constituted a key link in a tradition of Black women’s poetics of protest, traceable to Harper and to Phillis Wheatley before her. Ultimately, their poems on this subject offer a new lens on this decade, often unfairly viewed as a pre-Harlem fallow period in African American women’s poetry and political contributions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×