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"Poetry for the People": Reading Garveyism through Poetry

stripes

Refers to the stars of the American flag, highlighting that black people in the United States were "reared" in a land and culture quite separate from their "fatherland," Africa. However, it may also refer to the stripes laid upon black people by their oppressors, both during and after slavery. Therefore, the line presents two forms of violence that these "four million" were raised under; the first violence was that of being stolen away from their homeland and separated from their kin, and the second violence was the physical torture used to maintain dominion over those who were enslaved or who were abused even in freedom.

This page is referenced by:

Four Million Strong., by Ethel Trew Dunlap
Four million with one single aim
To loose the shackled hand!
Four million who have turned their eyes
Toward their fatherland.

Four million who demand the stake
Shall not consume their kin!
Four million seeking human rights,
With God to help them win.

Four million pointing to the past:
Its skeletons concealed!
Four million organized at last,
That tyrants be revealed.

Four million crying for their rights
To sail across the sea:
Four million asking Liberty
To set the black man free.

Four million, children all of slaves,
Reared under stripes and stars,
Hemmed in by the Atlantic waves
Oppressors turn to bars.

Four million with one rally cry,
And who are wide awake.
Spurred on by hopes that cannot die
For Egypt’s daughter’s sake.

Four million souls inspired to march

Wherever Freedom’s hand

Shall beckon, and to thrill the hearts

Of black men of this land.

Four million who will not be hushed,
Whose protests will not cease,
Until their race, dragged through the mire,
Shall find means of relief.
Composed by Ethel Trew Dunlap.

From the March 5, 1921 issue.