Alabama Centennial
Alabama Centennial
Naomi Long Madgett 1965
“Alabama Centennial” is a poem from Naomi Long Madgett’s third book of poems, Star by Star, published in 1965. It is representative of one of the two general categories into which her poems are divided: the lyric poems of her youth (influenced by Romanticism), and the more directly political works which recognize and trumpet the importance of civil rights issues for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. Clearly, “Alabama Centennial” falls into the latter category as it is a rhetorical recounting of the protest slogans and activist experience in Montgomery, Alabama, and other places. The poem was the result of a conversation Madgett had with a visiting scholar from the Netherlands, Rosey E. Pool. They first met in Detroit, where Madgett was to live for most of her life, and then began a correspondence. Clearly the poem is a proclamation of the strength of African Americans in their fight for civil rights. By mentioning certain historical protests and marches, it also serves as a chronicle. Perhaps it is most vehement though as a demand, as with its recounting of the trials and suffering of African Americans it announces that “the chain of patient acquiescence” has broken and the time for equality and dignity is “Now!”
Author Biography
Madgett was born July 5, 1923, in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father Clarence Marcellus Long was a member of the clergy, and her mother Maude Long was a teacher. Madgett published her first volume of poetry, Songs to a Phantom Nightingale, in 1941. After graduating with honors from Virginia State College in 1945, Madgett took a job as a reporter for the Michigan Chronicle. In 1946 she married Julian Witherspoon and left the newspaper. She was divorced in 1949 and worked as a service representative for the Michigan Bell telephone company until 1954, the same year she married William Harold Madgett. For ten years, beginning in 1955, Madgett taught in the Detroit public school system. The following year she received a master’s degree in education from Wayne State University. Madgett taught English at Eastern Michigan University from 1968 until she was named professor emeritus in 1984. She served as an editor at Lotus Press from 1974 to 1993, when she was named director. Madgett has contributed poetry to more than 100 anthologies and to numerous periodicals, in addition to publishing her own volumes of poetry.
Poem Text
They said, “Wait.” Well, I waited.
For a hundred years I waited
In cotton fields, kitchens, balconies,
In bread lines, at back doors, on chain gangs,
In stinking “colored” toilets 5
And crowded ghettos,
Outside of schools and voting booths.
And some said, “Later.”
And some said, “Never!”
Then a new wind blew, and a new voice 10
Rode its wings with quiet urgency,
Strong, determined, sure.
“No,” it said. “Not ‘never,’ not ‘later,’
Not even ‘soon.’
Now. 15
Walk!”
And other voices echoed the freedom words,
“Walk together, children, don’t get weary,”
Whispered them, sang them, prayed them, shouted
them.
“Walk!” 20
And I walked the streets of Montgomery
Until a link in the chain of patient acquiescence
broke.
Then again: Sit down!
And I sat down at the counters of Greensboro.
Ride! And I rode the bus for freedom. 25
Kneel! And I went down on my knees in prayer
and faith.
March! And I’ll march until the last chain falls
Singing, “We shall overcome.”
Not all the dogs and hoses in Birmingham
Nor all the clubs and guns in Selma 30
Can turn this tide.
Not all the jails can hold these young black faces
From their destiny of manhood,
Of equality, of dignity,
Of the American Dream 35
A hundred years past due.
Now!
Poem Summary
Lines 1-2
“Alabama Centennial” opens by establishing a very personal tone, the first person “I” in contrast with an anonymous “They.” One could easily assume, given the title and subject of the poem that the “They” is the white American establishment whose racist views and policies kept African Americans in a state of inequality. The gravity of this is then emphasized by the second line which reminds the reader of the history behind such a situation, how long it has been the case.
Lines 3-7
Here a list begins that adds historical context to the poem. “Cotton fields” and “kitchens” refer to times of slavery when these were the predominant places African Americans were forced to work. “Bread lines” and “chain gangs” then introduce the ideas of extreme poverty, most specifically during the Great Depression, and of jail, a very literal image of the bondage experienced by African Americans. Line 5 then offers one of the strongest of the list, a reference to segregated bathrooms. This line stands out, it seems, because of this word “stinking” which is sharp sounding relative to the words that surround it. It also evokes a particular sensory reaction, that of smell, which adds strength. “Crowded ghettos” then shifts the focus briefly to the inner city, the urban scene where though there are “Schools and voting booths,” the speaker of the poem is left “Outside” of them. All of these images together provide an historical line of neglect and oppression.
It is worth noting as well how Madgett uses anaphora in lines 3, 4, and 5 to add rhythm and strength to the list. Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of the line, and here, with the repetition of the short, sharp word “In,” it almost has the effect of hammering in a nail.
Lines 8-9
Here Madgett closes the first stanza by referring back to the words of the opposition and in doing so adds some complexity to the situation by showing different extents of the opposition: some asking for more time before change, others saying forget it. Both, however, given the tone established in the opening of the poem, are unacceptable to the speaker.
Lines 10-12
Then, with the beginning of the second stanza, a shift takes place. First the wind is offered as an image of change, and carried by that wind, a voice. Notice too the importance of the shift of that voice. In the first stanza, it was the anonymous “they” that spoke the words, while those oppressed said nothing. Here, now that it has been introduced, it is the voice of the neglected—“strong, determined, sure”—that is about to be heard.
Lines 13-16
The voice here readdresses the oppressive shouts of the first stanza by negating them. The speaker is claiming them to be unacceptable, even in their milder forms of “soon” and “later.” To continue the earlier idea that the anaphoric “In” in stanza one was like hammering in a nail, the repetition here has a similar effect. The word “not” being repeated drives home the idea of unacceptability, of resistance, and line 15, with its brevity and isolation, almost appears as a nail driven fully in: “Now.” The poem then shifts from the theme of sound and speaking, to one of action, with an equally short and exclamatory line: “Walk!”
Lines 17-18
Here a new stanza seems appropriate for the combining of the voices and action, as others join in both the speaking of the words and the walking in protest. It is interesting to note the use of the word “children” in line 18. This word, it could be argued, carries both the connotations of vulnerability, that a child is at the mercy of someone larger, and of hope, as children have almost their whole lives ahead of them. The emphasis then is on togetherness, which could offer strength in the face of weariness.
Lines 19-20
Here we are given the variety of forms in which the voices offer themselves, from the very subtle, to the musical, to the religious, to the angry. All different forms of expressing oneself in the face of adversity. As these echo in the head of the reader, the command comes again with force in line 20: “Walk!”
Media Adaptations
- Furious Flower: Conversations with African-American Poets was released by California Newsreel in 1998.
- A Poet’s Voice: Poetry by Naomi Long Madgett from Octavia and Other Poems was released by Vander Films in 1997.
- Words Like Freedom: Sturdy Black Bridges, recorded with permission from the Starz Channel, 1997.
- Writers Live with Naomi Long Madgett was released by Municipal Library Access Channel 9 in 1996.
- A Poet’s Voice produced by Carousel Film and Video,1990.
Lines 21-22
At this point in the poem, specific reference to the speaker returns as the first person “I” tells of following the command and taking to the streets of Montgomery. This is a reference to the peaceful protest march that took place in Montgomery, Alabama, one of the centers of the Civil Rights Movement. And the walking continued until the “patient acquiescence,” likened metaphorically here to a chain that has bound the marchers, is replaced by the more fervent demand of “Now” heard earlier in the poem.
Lines 23-24
The fourth stanza begins what will be a list of demands for different kinds of action, and the speaker’s response to them. From walking we now shift to sitting, no doubt a reference to the sit-in non-violent protests of segregated establishments held across the country during this time. In this case it is in Greensboro, North Carolina, which again, as with the previous mention of Montgomery, presents both a geographic and historical context for the poem. The specific detail of sitting at the counters also helps strengthen the image of the protest.
Line 25
Here another activity that was central to the Civil Rights Movement is alluded to. In this case it is the Freedom Rides of the South which held as their goal the desegregation of buses.
Line 26
With this command and the following one, Madgett introduces not a specific time or place, but the role of faith in the speaker’s struggle. This mentioning of religion also broadens the scope of the poem as it now includes issues of morality, and not only justice.
Lines 27-28
The fourth stanza then concludes with one final command, returning full circle to that which started the list, walking. Now though it has been altered, even transformed, into marching. This of course carries connotations of added strength, given that the word “marching” makes one think of greater numbers of people than “walking” does, and also brings in the idea of an army. The last line here then returns the poem full circle to the voice that is now singing one of the key protest songs of the entire Civil Rights Movement, “We Shall Overcome.”
It is worth noting how this paragraph coheres in part because of the parallel structure employed by Madgett. This is when a similar rhetorical structure is used with different phrases, and an excellent example exists here in the fourth stanza as lines 25 to 27 all begin with a one-word exclamatory command, which is then followed by an affirmative sentence beginning with the phrase “And I …” As well as implying the relatedness of these different acts, it also presents them in a smoother, almost musical way that mimics the singing about to come. In poetry, choice of rhetorical structure— where and how to place the words—is as important as which words are being used.
Lines 29-31
With the action of the above stanzas well established and indefinite (“until the last chains fall”) the poem now shifts toward its closing. It reaffirms the strength of the movement and protest by listing certain things that have been used to squash efforts in the past and stating that they will no longer work. These specific details help to sharpen the image of the confrontations as one can easily picture “dogs” and “clubs” and “guns.” There is also reference again to actual places where protest and confrontation have occurred, Montgomery and Selma being key locations of non-violent protest and gathering during the Civil Rights Movement.
This line not only serves as another illustration of how the struggle for equality cannot be stopped, because, literally, there is not enough room or force to detain the people, but it also helps tie the poem together before its end by making reference to the physical restraint—the chain gang—of the first stanza.
Here the poem nears its end and finally comes out and tells what the goal of all the protest recounted has been. Clearly there is some idea throughout the poem, with all the historical references, but to summarize the poem speaks of the “destiny of manhood, / of equality, of dignity.” The key word here in regards to the rest of the poem, it could be argued, is “destiny” as it implies that what is desired—the freedom and equality to grow and live one’s life—is not only a right, but is a fundamental part of a larger plan. It is how it is suppose to be, the poem claims with this one word. This presents an opposing idea to that of Manifest Destiny which was used by Europeans founding America to justify whatever actions—slave-trading being only one of the horrific ones—they took.
Lines 36-37
This second to the last line echoes the second line of the poem by stating the duration of the oppression, and it here sets up the final line, “Now!”, which can be seen as yet another nail being driven home. The message of the poem, that the time has come, echoes in the reader’s mind.
Themes
American Dream
The phrase “The American Dream” brings many things to mind: self-reliance, entrepreneur-ship, freedom, equality, and economic prosperity, to name a few. The early literature of the nation was very concerned with defining the American Dream. Thomas Jefferson dreamt of a nation of farmers, while Ralph Waldo Emerson rhapsodized about the importance of self-reliance. At the same time discussions of this American Dream were going on, a whole race of people were being systematically denied the tenets that make up the dream: freedom, the vote, economic independence, even the ownership of one’s own body. Instead of owning homes, getting an education, farming land, and building towards a future, African-Americans were held “in bread lines, at back doors, on chain gangs / In stinking ‘colored’ toilets / And crowded ghettos, / Outside of schools and voting booths.”
Economically disenfranchised during and after slavery, African-Americans were denied access into the places of society where the American Dream resides. But Madgett’s message in “Alabama Centennial” is one of hope. Her generation is reclaiming that lost dream through protest. Civil disobedience was first enumerated in this country by transcendentalist essayist Henry David Thoreau. A few generations later, India’s Mahatma Gandhi shaped civil disobedience into a fight for Indian independence from British rule. Then in the 1950s and 60s, the torch was passed to Martin Luther King. The Civil Rights Movement took as its foundation the principals of civil disobedience. In this way, black Americans were claiming their right to the American dream by practicing one of the most fundamental rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights: civil protest. Madgett speaks of her people “riding,” “marching,” and “kneeling” for freedom in protests throughout the South. In this way, they claim the American Dream, as she says, “A hundred years past due.”
Justice and Injustice
Madgett’s “Alabama Centennial” takes as its premise that the past hundred years, and two hundred or so years before that were filled with injustice. She never mentions the word “slavery”— instead she conjures it up through potent images: “cotton fields, kitchens balconies.” She envisions history as a struggle between the weight of justice and drag of injustice. In the poem, that struggle is initially represented through contrasting voices: “they,” vs. “I,” and eventually “we.” “They” represents the negative forces of white America, with extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and institutions such as Jim Crow laws. Madgett’s single “I” is joined by the larger “we” to fight these injustices, and that “we” voice grows stronger throughout the poem, culminating with the song “We shall overcome” in the next-to-last stanza.
Madgett’s vision of history is dynamic, with forces of injustice and justice always fighting each other. For every “never” white America sends down, the collective “we” speaker responds with a “no,” “not never,” “not later.” There is movement and energy. To fight injustice, black Americans sitin at lunchcounters, boycott buses, and march peacefully while chanting. Fighting injustice is marked in a physical way, with blood and sweat
Topics for Further Study
- Consider a social injustice that you think should be corrected and write a poem about how you think society could go about conquering it, centering your energies around specific exclamations, as this author does with “Walk!” “Ride!” “Kneel!” “March!” and “Now!”
- Langston Hughes’s “Dreams” also addresses the problem of living with racial segregation in America, but his poem is much quieter, more understated. Which poem do you think would be more successful in affecting its readers? What does the fact that Hughes’s poem is structured like blues music and Madgett’s has no formal structure tell you about the point that each author is trying to make?
- This poem was published in 1965, at the height of the civil rights movement in America. Explain the author’s use of the towns Montgomery, Greensboro, Birmingham, and Selma. What happened in these places? Is it a good idea for an author to refer to specific historical events, or does their meaning fade with time?
and bodies placed in jail. Madgett also speaks of the movement as having a life of its own: “Not all the dogs and horses in Birmingham / … Can turn this tide.”
Rites of Passage
Madgett doesn’t speak of rites of passage in an overt way in “Alabama Centennial”; rather, it is implied. The topic of her poem—the Civil Rights Movement—was in many ways a youth movement, with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee training hundreds of student civil rights workers on college campuses. In general, people speak of the decade of the sixties as a time of youth revolution.
While the collective “we” of the poem is meant to cut across the age divide, in many ways, Madgett is recounting a coming of age of an entire generation in lines such as, “Walk together, children, don’t get weary.” The movement towards freedom is also a movement towards adulthood. The tired bones of the older generation of black Americans who grew up in the earlier part of the twentieth century are “revived,” in a way, by the eager, younger generation not content to accept legalized discrimination. She refers specifically to youth in the concluding stanza: “Not all the jails can hold these young black faces / From their destiny of manhood.” In this way, “Alabama Centennial” is very forward-looking. Madgett focuses on what this next generation will achieve.
Style
“Alabama Centennial” is written in free verse. This means that there is not an established meter or rhyme, as in traditional poetic forms. It is probably fair to say that the content of this poem is what determines its form. Given that the poem is about breaking free from the binding forces of racism and inequality, the language itself breaks from older, traditionally European forms. This was not just happening for writers writing of racial oppression; a movement among American writers to break from traditional structure had begun decades earlier. In this case, though, the relationship between the idea of free verse, and the subject of the poem, seems clearly present.
If there is a formal consistency to the poem it is the use of lists, places or events, that recur throughout. This is heightened with the use of anaphora, which is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a line, and with the use of parallelism, which is a rhetorical device that uses similar phrasing to hold things together. A good example is line 13, which reads “‘No,’ it said. ‘Not ‘never,’ not ‘later.’” The repetition of the word “not” not only binds the words, but creates a certain rhythm in the process.
Historical Context
When Madgett refers to the American Dream “one hundred years past due,” she is situating the African-American struggle for civil rights in a century-long struggle for equality and respect. Madgett wrote “Alabama Centennial” in 1965—the middle of a tumultuous and sometimes violent decade. But it was also a decade of substantial progress for civil rights movements, with people such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks ushering in winds of change.
This poem was written exactly one hundred years after the Civil War ended and blacks were at last freed from slavery. But the residues of slavery would live long into the next century, spurred by such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan and institutions such as black codes and Jim Crow laws.
The South remained highly segregated long after reconstruction. There was little progress in easing racial tensions through the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. In Alabama in 1901, a new state constitution was adopted, which had the effect of further disenfranchising black voters. In fact, total blacks registered in 14 counties in Alabama fell from 78,311 in 1900 to 1,081 in 1903.
Segregation was a way of life in the South, and in other regions of the country as well. Blacks and whites attended separate schools, drank from different water fountains and had different bathrooms. When riding the bus, blacks were forced to give up seats on the front of the bus for white people and had to move to the back of the bus. There were “white only” lunch counters, restaurants, parks, and theaters. The doctrine “separate but equal,” derived from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was supposedly the guiding force behind segregation, but things were far from equal in terms of public facilities and distribution of wealth.
Things began to change in the 1950s and 60s when blacks and sympathetic whites rose up in civil protest. First, in 1954, the Supreme Court declared that separate educational facilities were “inherently unequal” in its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas. Still, things were slow to change until 1955, when Rosa Parks helped to spark a movement when she refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her act of defiance led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted a year and was nearly 100% successful in ending segregation on the buses. The boycott was the beginning of massive civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama (April 1963) and Selma, Alabama (March 1965). The protests consisted of nonviolent direct action—the philosophy preached by Baptist minister and leader of the movement Martin Luther King. Finally in 1964, Congress passed the Civil rights Act. This piece of legislation prohibited discrimination in employment and established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This act also outlawed
Compare & Contrast
- 1950s: Many public schools remained segregated into the 1950s, as established by the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that declared “separate but equal” as the guiding standard for segregation. The “Separate but equal” standard was overturned in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 when segregation of public schools was outlawed.
1970s: Bussing, the practice of moving students to different districts to promote racial integration, becomes a means for integrating school districts that are predominantly white.
Today: Public education continues to reflect economic status, with larger city schools facing financial issues compared with wealthier, suburban school districts. - 1960s: Strong and charismatic civil rights leaders emerge nationally. Martin Luther King proved integral in starting the nonviolent action movement, with peaceful sit-ins, marches, and protests aimed at change. Malcolm X was a leader in the Black Nationalist movement to empower African-Americans. The Black Panthers were a militant group for the rights of African-Americans.
Today: No lone figure dominates as the spokesperson in the struggle for equality and justice.
discrimination in public accommodations linked to interstate commerce such as restaurants and hotels. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, prohibiting local governments or individuals from interfering with the right of blacks to register and vote.
Although King advocated non-violence, it was a bloody decade. Black churches were bombed, civil rights workers were killed, the police assaulted demonstrators, and riots broke out. Other movements also gained momentum in the 1960s, such as the women’s movement, the gay rights movement, the Native American movement, and the Anti-War movement. It was a time of intense energy on the part of young people all across the country. College campuses became radical organizing grounds for protest movements. The desire to change society was felt in many social arenas, including politics. Many regarded president John F. Kennedy as a social reformer; but his presidency was cut short when he was assassinated in 1963. Lyndon Johnson was his successor. Johnson wanted to create the “great society”; he started many of the entitlement programs we still have today, such as welfare. As the decade wore on and the 1970s were ushered in, the activity in Vietnam continued to increase. Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X were all assassinated in the late sixties. The mood of optimism and energy slowly began to shift in the 1970s as inflation rose and veterans came back from Vietnam to find themselves outcasts. The fight for civil rights on part of African-Americans and other minorities continued, and still continues today.
Critical Overview
Madgett is often hailed as a teacher and publisher as much as she is celebrated as a poet. She taught in Detroit area schools for much of her life and has spent over twenty years as a professor of creative writing and African-American Literature at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. In 1972 she began Lotus Press, which focused on publishing work by black writers who were rejected by white editors and publishers. Madgett’s work in particular was often refused because it was either “not black enough” or “too black,” which meant that it either wasn’t direct enough about the sufferings of African Americans, or it was too angry and volatile. Her skill was apparent from the earliest days, and she was referred to by Saunders Redding
in Negro Digest as “a natural poet.” Redding also observed that “for all her metrical skill, her phrasing was weak” and that she used “shopworn images and vague ‘poetic’ terms like ‘dreams.’” In stating such criticism, it was his hope that Madgett would soon develop a “more rigorous diction” to complement her “intelligence and prosodic ability.”
Criticism
Judi Ketteler
Judi Ketteler has taught Literature and English Composition and is currently a freelance writer based in Cincinnati, Ohio. In this essay, Ketteler discusses the way in which Madgett uses language to make a political statement about racism and injustice in this country.
In “Alabama Centennial,” Madgett creates a political poem through her elevated language and carefully chosen images and metaphors regarding the black experience in America. Madgett also takes special care to highlight shifting voices in the poem, illustrating the power struggle between the white establishment and African-American activism in the 1950s and 1960s. “Alabama Centennial,” is a testimony to the brutal century of racism and indignity suffered by black Americans. But Madgett moves beyond painting her people as victims; instead, she chooses images of strength in speaking about the Civil Rights Movement, underscoring the ways in which she and her fellow black Americans have fought, and in fact, have triumphed.
It is worth noting that Madgett wrote “Alabama Centennial,” in 1965, in the midst of a decade filled with large scale civil rights protests. A very versatile poet, Madgett has also written a great deal of lyric and romantic poetry, using images from nature to address such topics as love, death, and spirituality. “Alabama Centennial” is part of the collection Star by Star, which contains both types of poems. Madgett has a deep appreciation for language, whether she is using it to raise her voice in political protest, or to celebrate the beauty of morning dew on a rose.
In “Alabama Centennial,” Madgett uses language in a very personal way. She begins by situating a voice outside of herself with the opening stanza, “They said,”; this is then contrasted with “I waited.” This juxtaposition of voice and perspective sets up the entire poem. The reader is introduced to a litany of images. The order of these images is important in that it serves as a historical chronicle, filling in the gaps left by traditional histories. Madgett recalls all the places blacks have inhabited throughout their history in America: “Cotton fields, kitchens, balconies” chronicles the days of slavery; the Reconstruction Era and the early twentieth century is represented “in bread lines, at back doors, in chain gangs”; then, her contemporary era is reflected “In stinking ‘colored’ toilets / And crowded ghettos / Outside of schools and voting booths.” In each of these sets of images, Madgett highlights the exclusion of African-Americans. Literally speaking, they are excluded from the household, from school, from good jobs; figuratively, they are excluded from opportunity, and as Madgett points out later in the poem, from the American Dream.
If Madgett is acting as a chronicler of African-American history, she is also borrowing from the tradition of the “griot.” Griots were storytellers in preindustrial African societies. Literary critic Eugene Redmond, author of Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, explained that the “black poet, as creator and chronicler, evolves from these artisans—human oral recorders of family and national lore. Trained to recite without flaw the genealogy, eulogies, victories, and calamities of folk, griots (like the lead singers of spirituals) had to spice their narration with drama and excitement.” Madgett certainly uses drama and excitement in her narration of the Civil Rights movement. Her language has energy. As the poem progresses, her voice grows louder, more forceful, more certain. She wants to preserve this moment in history for future generations. This too is another function of the griot. In Racism 101, African-American poet and essayist Nikki Giovanni commented, “There must always be griots … else how will we know who we are?”.
Just as history is marked with the exclusion and with the blood and struggles of African-Americans, it is also marked with their resistance and dissenting voices. The voice introduced in the beginning—the all-consuming “they”—loses ground to the more powerful “we” and the image of a “strong, determined, sure” black presence. Madgett is creating an African-American identity of resistance. There is a sense of urgency in the second stanza of the poem, and it is an urgency long overdue. A powerful “No” in line 13, a refusal to stay subservient, then an echoing of that no reiterates
“Madgett has a deep appreciation for language, whether she is using it to raise her voice in political protest, or to celebrate the beauty of morning dew on a rose.”
that refusal: “And other voices echoed the freedom words.”
In creating this dialog of dissension, Madgett is invoking the call/response technique of traditional black spirituals. When blacks were held in slavery, they often used spirituals to communicate, to pass information about escape plans and to relay messages. It was a means of communicating subversively, or communicating subversive information within the bounds of what was acceptable and wouldn’t raise suspicion. In Drumvoices, Redmond noted: “Through songs, aphorisms, fables, jokes, blues, and other enduring forms, Blacks capture severe hardships and tribulations, folk wisdom, joys and tragedies, and longings and hopes during and after slavery.” Madgett calls upon this tradition as a means of delivering her people. Instead of fighting the slave master, she and her fellow black Americans are fighting a system of legalized bigotry. They are gathering strength through their words. The voices of protest that “whispered them, sang them, prayed them, shouted them” become stronger throughout the poem. The energy Madgett creates by recalling these voices of protest is another way in which language is of central importance in this struggle. It is what builds the sense of urgency; it multiples, as other voices “echo the freedom words.” Language is what creates a space for agency, and Madgett draws on the oratory, a powerful mode of communication.
The oratory, or public speech, was extremely important in the nineteenth century, especially in the anti-slavery movement. Such leaders as William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips would organize anti-slavery conventions, inviting such powerful speakers as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, both of whom were ex-slaves.
What Do I Read Next?
- Poet, playwright, and novelist Ntozake Shange is an important voice in contemporary African-American poetry. Her for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf is a long “choreopoem” that was also staged as a Broadway Play in 1976. Shange tackles issues such as racism, identity, and black womanhood in her poetry.
- Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison has written several novels and essays. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, set in the 1940s, tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl trying to come to terms with her own blackness in a world obsessed with white standards of beauty. Morrison addresses the inner struggle that many African-American writers consider, including Madgett.
- Nikki Giovanni was first widely published in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement. The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996) is both personal and political. Giovanni is an important voice in African-American culture and her poems are very accessible.
Madgett is borrowing from this rhetorical tradition in the way she chronicles the events of the Civil Rights movement. She speaks in first person: “And I sat at the counters of Greensboro. / Ride! And I rode the bus for freedom. / Kneel! And I went down on my knees in prayer and faith. / March! And I’ll march until the last chain falls / Singing, ‘We shall overcome.’” Just as ex-slaves would recount their experiences in slavery and their escapes, Madgett is recounting the modern day movement towards freedom, trying to inspire a mixture of emotions: anger, hope, pride, and excitement, to name a few.
Madgett’s words act as a road map, locating the physical presence of black people in places all over the south: Montgomery, Greensboro, Birmingham, Selma. These were all sites of protest and revolution, marked with the sweat and tears of Madgett’s people. These were also sites of white resistance to the black struggle for civil rights— police using fire hoses to spray the crowd, night-sticks flying, churches burned, Ku Klux Klan demonstrations. Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., were jailed as a result of demonstrations. Madgett addresses this resistance in the final stanza: “Not all the dogs and hoses in Birmingham / Nor all the clubs and guns in Selma / Can turn this tide.” The movement, the desire for freedom and opportunity, is stronger than the hatred and fear of white America.
As a black woman, Madgett is speaking from a doubly marginalized identity in 1960s American culture. The contemporary women’s movement gained momentum later than the civil rights movement, picking up steam in the late 1960s and 1970s. It is interesting to consider Madgett’s position in these two movements. As an African-American, she clearly identifies with the Civil Rights movement. In the final stanza, she chooses an interesting image to present: “Not all the jails can hold these young black faces / From their destiny of manhood.” One imagines Martin Luther King writing his famous letter from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, as well as the scores of other black men jailed. But the reader is left to wonder about the destiny of womanhood. Historian and critic Deborah Gray White, in Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994, commented: “The masculine ethos of the era was certainly an impediment, but so was the Civil Rights movement’s subsumption of gender and class issues. The movement was at once a black women’s movement, a black movement, and a class-based movement, and it was not easy to define what was, and was not, a women’s issue.”
To throw gender into the mix complicates a reading of “Alabama Centennial.” When historians speak of the Civil Rights movement, sometimes the male role in the movement is emphasized, with impassioned speeches from Martin Luther King. There is no doubt that the male leaders of the movement had tremendous impact in mobilizing an entire culture to protest. But black feminism also held—and still holds—great influence in the African-American community. Madgett does not outwardly identify with the burgeoning black feminism of the 1960s, nor does she dismiss it. We can only surmise that it is there as one of the many political forces shaping her work.
Certainly “Alabama Centennial” is a call to action. Madgett carefully constructs the poem to evoke both anger and empowerment. The anger and desire for freedom and full rights of American citizenship is what fuels the fight for equality. The empowerment is the net result that comes from years of protest and struggles to reeducate American society—a struggle that still resonates.
Source: Judi Ketteler, in an essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 2001.
Paul Witcover
Paul Witcover is a novelist and editor in New York City with an M.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from The City University of New York. In the following essay, he discusses themes of racism and responsibility in Naomi Long Madgett’s poem, “Alabama Centennial.”
Naomi Long Madgett’s poem, “Alabama Centennial,” published in her 1965 collection Star by Star, is at once a stirring call to action and a moving record of psychological and social transformation. The poem works on a variety of levels to communicate its theme of the struggle for individual and collective emancipation. That struggle occurs within the confines of a culture of institutionalized racism that employs violence, fear, and habit to shape, consciously and unconsciously, every aspect of public life and private thought. Poems like this one, which rely upon a reader’s familiarity with political and historical events, and which seek to move that reader toward a particular point of view by appeals to reason, conscience, and emotion, fall into the category of didactic poetry.
The title of Madgett’s poem refers to a centennial, a word meaning the celebration of a one hundred anniversary. But what anniversary is referred to? Readers might naturally assume at first that it is the one hundred anniversary of Alabama’s statehood, but in fact Madgett has a very different anniversary in mind. It is no coincidence that “Alabama Centennial.” appeared in 1965, exactly one-hundred years after the end of the Civil War. That is the centennial to which Madgett’s ironic but also hopeful title refers.
What was the status of African-Americans in the United States 100 years after the defeat of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery? Despite Congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African-American men and women in 1965 were still treated as second-class citizens throughout much of the country. The legacy of institutionalized racism persisted. That legacy includes Jim Crow laws adopted by states to deny their non-white citizens full participation in, and access to,
“Madgett has no interest in reducing the problems of segregation and racism to a black versus white, good versus evil, dichotomy. The reality she perceives is too complex for that.”
the government under which they lived, to which they paid taxes, and in whose armies they fought and died. The phrase “separate but equal” was the rallying cry used by those—like Alabama’s governor, George Wallace—determined to protect white privilege and power at all costs. While Alabama’s reputation as a bastion of racism made it a logical place for Madgett to set her poetic centennial, she is not writing about Alabama alone, but every state in the Union. When the reader recalls that the states of the Union are represented on the American flag by stars, the title of the collection in which “Alabama Centennial.” appears, Star by Star, takes on a new significance.
The Jim Crow laws, and the philosophy of “separate but equal” used to rationalize them, came under increasing attack from the 1950s. Many historians date the beginning of the modern Civil Rights movement to 1955-1956, when Rosa Parks’s brave refusal to give up her bus seat triggered the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, the event which catapulted a charismatic advocate of non-violent resistance, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to national prominence.
1965 would prove to be a turning point for the Civil Rights movement, as Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violence was challenged by other African Americans impatient with the pace of change. In March of that year, Dr. King led more than 25,000 peaceful marchers into Montgomery, Alabama to press for passage of the Voting Rights Act. That triumphant march that serves as the occasion of Madgett’s poem. But it is worth remembering that while President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, racial tensions in the United States had grown so high by then that just five days later, on August 11, a routine traffic stop by white police officers in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts sparked one of the worst riots in American history.
This and subsequent events, such as the assassination of Dr. King in 1968 and the rioting that followed, cannot help but influence readers’ reactions to “Alabama Centennial.” Are readers wrong to bring knowledge unavailable to Madgett into their experience of her poem? Surely not. If a poem is to be more than a lifeless artifact entombed in language, it must grow and change with the wider world. At the same time, readers have a responsibility to remain rooted as much as possible in the language, rhythms, and images of the poem itself before looking beyond them.
Robert Sedlack, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, states that the narrator of “Alabama Centennial” “assumes the collective voice of [civil rights] protestors.” There is a progression from the “I” of the poem’s first line—repeated no less than six times in the following lines—to the “we” of line 28. Not only that, but the poet almost immediately lets her readers know that the “I” is not just a single person; after all, it is unlikely that one individual could wait “for a hundred years” and in such a wide variety of places as those featured in lines 3-7. Just as the State of Alabama in the poem’s title stands for both itself and all 50 states, so, too, does the “I” stand for both an individual person and a multitude of people. This is a common poetic device known as synecdoche: that is, the use of a part to mean the whole.
The poem opens with a simple sentence: “They said, ‘Wait.’” But nothing in this poem is as simple as it appears. Who exactly are “they”? The first stanza continues in a list that includes cotton fields, chain gangs, “stinking ‘colored’ toilets” and the “outside of schools and voting booths.” Each of these items powerfully evokes the narrow opportunities available to, and the humiliations and brutalities inflicted upon, generations of African Americans under the Jim Crow laws. The narrator speaks of waiting in these places, but for what? The answer isn’t stated explicitly until the third stanza, line 17, where the word “freedom” appears. But even in the first stanza that answer is already clear, partly because of the poem’s title and the historical ironies and associations embedded therein, and partly because of the list of places carefully selected by the poet to elicit specific reactions in her audience. The reader might therefore decide that “they,” the ones who tell the narrator to wait, are white people, especially when the stanza goes on to conclude with the lines: “And some said, ‘Later.’ / And some said, ‘Never!’”
The narrator is indeed referring to white people. But not only whites. The ambiguity of the words “they” and “some” allows the poet to cast a wider net. Madgett has no interest in reducing the problems of segregation and racism to a black versus white, good versus evil, dichotomy. The reality she perceives is too complex for that.
The second stanza introduces “a new voice.” This voice answers the voices of the first stanza. “‘No,’ it said. ‘Not “never,” not “later,” / Not even “soon.” / Now. / Walk!’” The poem moves from the passivity of waiting to the action of walking: the peaceful protest marches that were among the most visible and successful tools of the civil rights movement. The reader would not be wrong to identify this “new voice” with that of Dr. King, and in fact, the sermon-like rhythms and even the language and images of the entire poem closely parallel Dr. King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech from 1963. But again, because the owner of the voice is never explicitly identified, it seems to issue from a multitude of throats in a force as fresh and pervasive as the wind with which it is compared: “Strong, determined, sure.”
In the third stanza, other voices join in to echo “the freedom words.” Up until now, all the voices in the poem have “said” their words. But suddenly the words are whispered, sung, prayed, and shouted. The explosive variety of verbs, contrasted with the flat repetition of “said,” expresses the mounting passion and determination of those who walk “the streets of Montgomery.” This stanza is the heart of the poem structurally; two stanzas precede it and two stanzas follow. It is also the heart of the poem in a figurative sense, the turning point where a dramatic change takes place. That change occurs in the final line of the stanza: “Until a link in the chain of patient acquiescence broke.”
It is worth looking at this line closely, for it is the well-oiled hinge upon which the poem, like a hidden door, swings smoothly and unexpectedly open. The words “link” and “chain” suggest the bonds of slavery which have continued to shackle the supposedly free descendants of slaves even after a hundred years. But the chain the narrator refers to is one of “patient acquiescence.” This is no iron chain imposed by force or trickery upon African Americans, nor is it even the more subtle but equally restrictive chain of oppressive laws. It is hard to see how those chains could be characterized as patient or acquiescent. No, this chain is an inner chain forged by fear and habit within the soul of the narrator, who, it should not be forgotten, speaks for multitudes. Freedom does not lie simply in breaking the chains imposed by racist white society. Those chains must certainly be broken, but the poet suggests more is necessary. Note that it is not enough to walk. Walking is only the beginning. The narrator walks until a link in the chain of patient acquiescence breaks. The narrator is that link. The chain is made up of many links, each an individual African American who must, like the narrator, decide to patiently acquiesce no more. In other words, the poet is stating that African Americans must wake to their own complicity in the racist status quo. Suddenly, with a shock, the reader realizes that the “they” of the first stanza is not made up of whites alone, but of African Americans as well. It is difficult to convey the hostility this message would have generated in the increasingly militant atmosphere of the civil rights movement of the mid-1960s. Indeed, it remains a controversial opinion nearly half a century later.
Once this inner awakening or liberation has occurred, real transformation of self and society can take place. This is what happens in the fourth and fifth stanzas. The “new voice” from the second stanza returns, demanding more of its listeners than mere walking. “Sit down!” it exhorts. “Ride!” “Kneel!” “March!” Each of these sharp commands evokes a protest tactic of the civil rights movement, from lunch counter sit-ins to freedom rider voter registration drives. The “I” of the poem, both individual and collective, vows to “march until the last chain falls.” And now the chain refers to both the inner chain of patient acquiescence and the outer chain of racist society. This is a process that, once started, cannot be stopped. “Not all the jails can hold these young black faces / From their destiny of manhood, / Of equality, of dignity, / Of the American Dream / A hundred years past due. / Now!”
There are three things to note about these closing lines. First, the freedom the narrator claims for the “young black faces” is to be found within the American system of government, not outside it. Unlike such groups as the Black Panthers, the narrator does not wish to escape or overthrow the American Dream but rather to join in. Second, while the poem begins with the word “wait,” it ends with “Now!” A transformation has taken place in the all-important line 22, an individual awakening of political and social awareness that prompts a change of stance from passive acceptance to active engagement. Third, in a sharp historical irony, women are missing from the narrator’s call for freedom, equality, and dignity. The destiny the narrator refers to is one of “manhood.” This omission is a kind of blind spot, reflecting the reality of 1965, when the women’s liberation movement, itself inspired by the civil rights struggle, had yet to emerge as a powerful force in its own right. So it is that even as the poem’s triumphant last word rings in the reader’s mind like the peal of a bell stirring a sleepy countryside to action, the echo of that bell down the years is somewhat attenuated and flattened due to the interpolation of events, of history, between “Alabama Centennial” as Madgett wrote it and the poem’s contemporary reader.
Source: Paul Witcover, in an essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 2001.
Karen D. Thompson
In this essay, Thompson discusses how Madgett’s diction and structuring of “Alabama Centennial” contribute not only to the poem’s pace, but also to its irony.
A title like “Alabama Centennial” conjures images of a parade winding its way down Main Street featuring the high school marching band; little children run out into the street, while parents caution them, and pick bright disks of candy from the hot asphalt where clowns riding ridiculously small tri-cycles have thrown it. Festive picnickers sate their holiday appetites with weightless biscuits that threaten to float away if they’re not held onto, cold fried chicken that’s still crispy and smells of grease, and peach cobbler heavy enough to bend a foil baking pan held by the edges.
This is a realistic picture of an Alabama Centennial, is it not? Centennial, after all, means celebration.
No.
Centennial connotes, but does not denote celebration. It means simply a period of one hundred years, or the marking of one hundred years. In Madgett’s poem, the word “centennial,” far from suggesting a celebration, evokes serious and sad retrospection. For in “Alabama Centennial” Madgett bemoans a hundred years of the failure of the United States to deliver the justice promised by the Civil War, and she mourns the tragedy of lost lives and the degradation endured in the charade of “separate but equal” living conditions.
“This poem moves as justice moves: with stops and starts, fits and jerks.”
The decade of the 1960s could have been a time for celebration. The United States could have seized upon the opportunity to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the Constitutional amendment that ended slavery. Instead the hundred years after the end of the Civil War was marked, or marred, by Jim Crow Laws and violence.
Naomi Madgett’s choice of the word “centennial,” with its celebratory connotation, as her poem’s title presents a paradox. This paradox forces readers to identify her meaning and to scrutinize a poem they may otherwise skim because they’ve heard the story many times. Madgett continues to employ incongruity in the poem’s message. This is a poem about a movement: in this case, the Civil Rights movement. The very word “movement” presents a paradox. Movement is not limited to a single direction, is often incremental rather than continuous, and is often deceptive. Likewise, the hundred-year pursuit of freedom from color prejudice moves forward as well as backward, and it also stops. Additionally, movement toward justice is deceptive. It cannot be seen as it happens, but only as one looks back at a landmark and measures the distance traveled.
So it is with movement, or change, in society. Madgett mimics society’s erratic and sometimes imperceptible pace of change in this poem. Because it is free verse, the poem does not conform to a standard meter, which is one of the ways in which a poet achieves movement in a poem. The poem’s free verse form contains no intentional rhyme. If Madgett had used end rhyme, her readers would have moved quickly through the poem, perhaps pausing momentarily at the end of a couplet or quatrain, but then hurrying on toward the completion of the next rhyme. Perhaps the strongest sense of movement in poetry is accomplished with internal rhyme, a device which Madgett used along with end rhyme to great effect in her poem “Midway”: “I’m coming and I’m going / And I’m stretching and I’m growing / And I’ll reap what I’ve been sowing or my skin’s not black.”
“Alabama Centennial” is devoid of rhyme and rhythm, and perhaps intentionally so. This poem moves as justice moves: with stops and starts, fits and jerks. Its appearance on the page is jagged and irregular with lines of varying length, many of which are interrupted with punctuation marks. The lack of regular pace is fitting. When the word pace is applied to a liberation movement, an oxymoron is created. A liberation movement has no real pace, only a perceived pace, which for the oppressed is always too slow, for the oppressors is unacceptable, and for the fearful fringes is too fast.
While it lacks recognizable pace, the poem manages to elicit a feeling of urgency. However, this is not the result of standard poetic devices, but the result of punctuation and sentence length. The exclamations—“Never!” and “Walk!” and “Now!” are shouts of urgency. They are also, as single-word utterances, indicative of commands that demand immediate response. The use of these commands and the actions they elicit produce more than a feeling of exigency, they also contribute to the poem’s underlying irony. In line 10 “a new wind blew, and a new voice / rode its wings with quiet urgency.” Only after a single voice called out for freedom did other voices join the cry, and they joined as echoes. This image presents a sad irony.
The tragic legacy of the oppressed is that they are often so scarred by captivity that they evolve into a group without a voice, and sometimes without a vision. When a strong voice does rise, as one did with Reverend King, the voices of the oppressed masses, when they finally join in, are raised as echoes—almost as involuntary responses. The voices that joined the Civil Rights movement joined, it seems in this poem, in response to orders, as their ancestors had done for centuries. “Walk!” the voice said, “And I walked the streets of Montgomery,” and later, “Ride! And I rode the bus for freedom.” This is in truth sad irony, for one hundred years after the Civil War no black person should have been testing the waters of freedom for the first time. No black person should have still been waiting for an order to exercise an inalienable right. Fortunately, as was the case with Dr. King, directives sometimes issue from a beneficent source, and following them allows the dependent to move toward independence. Yet oppression persists. It persists for persons of color, persons of creed, persons of sexuality, persons of age, persons of gender. The list is as long as the people who will make it.
That is why I find two of the most troubling lines of this poem to be these: “Not all the jails can hold these young black faces / From their destiny of manhood.” Why did Madgett apparently exclude herself and all other females from the American Dream? Could a woman with a voice this strong, a mind this keen, and a vision this clear have been blind to the oppression of women? Could a woman so closely identified with her people that she used the pronoun “I” when referring to her entire race be intentionally exclusive of any of its members? Did she believe that civil rights was the destiny of black men and was to be led by black men? Was she careless? Was she a product of a generation not yet concerned with women’s rights?
I choose to believe that she was not. Instead, I believe she understood that the fight for justice demands a united army and a focused offensive because it is a war, as all are, of life and death. I believe that as she finished this poem, Madgett was convinced that a later Alabama Centennial would celebrate one hundred years of freedom for her people; that as soon as she felt that freedom for black males was secured, or at least securely on the horizon, she would turn her attention to the quest for women’s freedom; and that in her new fight she would willingly raise her voice first and loudest, providing the words that her sisters could echo.
Source: Karen D. Thompson, in an essay for Poetry for Students, Gale, 2001.
Sources
Randall, Dudley, The Black Poets, Bantam Books, 1971.
Giovanni, Nikki, Racism 101, William Morrow & Co., 1994.
Redding, Saunders, “Books Noted,” in Negro Digest, September, 1966, pp. 51-52.
Redmond, Eugene B., Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, Anchor Press, 1976.
Sedlack, Robert P., Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 76: Afro-American Writers, 1940–1955, edited by Trudier Harris, Gale, 1988.
White, Deborah Gray, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894–1994, W. W. Norton & Co., 1999.
For Further Study
Redmond, Eugene B., Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, Anchor Press, 1976.
A chronicle of African-American literature, including critical debates, a study of various African-American poets, background information, and a framework for studying African-American poetry.
Smith, Valerie, et al, African American Writers: Profiles of Their Lives and Works from the 1700s to the Present, Macmillan, 1991.
A study of African-American writers and the themes they explore in their work. An excellent resource book.
Walker, Alice, In Search of our Mother’s Gardens, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.
From essays about black writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Toomer to a tribute to Martin Luther King and a retrospective on the Civil Rights movement, this collection is a good companion to any study of African-American literature.