“I am a thing not new, I am as old
As human nature. I am that which lurks,
Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed;
The ancient trait which fights incessantly
Against restraint, balks at the upward climb;
The weight forever seeking to obey
The law of downward pull;—and I am more:
The bitter fruit am I of planted seed;
The resultant, the inevitable end
Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.”

— James Weldon Johnson

Brothers, st. 3.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

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James Weldon Johnson 23

writer and activist 1871–1938

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