after the storm has passed” (ll. 6–7). In “Valedic-
tory” the speaker rallies in the face of desertion and
vows to “write no more” of the one who makes
“vows... / Out of a haughty heart” and will no
longer “tremble for my sake / Nor writhe beneath
the smart / Of hearing on an alien tongue / Tolled
lightly and in play” (ll. 8, 9–13). In his pointed re-
sponse to the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, Cullen blasted
the accusers and those responsible for dragging out
the case for some seven years. “These men who do
not die, but send to death, / These iron men whom
mercy cannot bend / Beyond the lettered law,” he
wrote, “These are the men I should not care to be”
(ll. 1–3, 14).
Reviews, as they had been for his previous
works, were good, and the impact of the book con-
tinued to be felt years after its publication. Cullen’s
biographer, Blanche Ferguson, notes that in 1945
Eleanor Roosevelt called the book to the attention
of the American public and suggested that its title
poem be “required reading for every American stu-
dent as soon as he became mature enough to un-
derstand it” (Ferguson, 115). Cullen clearly took
pride in the book; just before his untimely death in
1946, he selected some 24 poems from The Black
Christfor inclusion in On These I Stand,a posthu-
mously published volume of collected poems that
he had carefully selected and arranged to have
published with his longtime publisher, Harper &
Brothers.
Bibliography
Ferguson, Blanche. Countee Cullen and the Negro Renais-
sance.New York: Dodd, Mead, 1966.
Shucard, Alan. Countee Cullen.Boston: Twayne, 1984.
Black DampJohn Matheus(1929)
Published in the April 1929 issue of Carolina Mag-
azine,this play was set in a West Virginia coal
mine, where a racially and ethnically mixed group
of miners grappled with the demands of the job
and their various motivations to work in the shafts.
The miners Big Steve Johnson, Foots Williams,
and Goosy Woods are good men, who are deter-
mined to earn enough to give their children and
their sisters a chance to make something of them-
selves. Twenty-six-year-old Johnson takes out a let-
ter that he has just received from his 18-year-old
sister and reads it to his friends. As they prepare
for another day of grueling work, they fend off the
aggressive overtures of the fireboss. Just before
they descend into the mines, they learn that a
white Prohibition officer was killed the night be-
fore. A police officer named Dawson arrives at
the mine, determined to arrest the two African-
American miners. Big Steve insists that he be al-
lowed to work his shift and to earn at least one
more day’s wages in order to support his sister. The
men intimidate the officer, and their coworkers as-
sure him that the two suspects will indeed return
and go peaceably with him.
The play intensifies as an explosion breaks out
in the mine and traps Johnson, Woods, and Dawson
down below. As they struggle to make it to safety,
the three men each reveal something important
about themselves. Johnson and Woods recall their
home life and deliver moving accounts of their
childhood experiences. Dawson, however, reveals
the truth about the murder of the Prohibition officer
and confesses that he is, in fact, the murderer. Just
as he delivers this shocking revelation, two rescuers
appear in the mine. In a savage twist, they decide
that they can only rescue one of the three men
there, and they take Dawson, the guilty man, and
leave the two upstanding, innocent men to die.
Black Damp,inspired by Matheus’s own expo-
sure to miners during his childhood, was one of 11
plays published in the special African-American
drama issue of Carolina Magazine. The play ap-
peared alongside works by LEWISALEXANDER, EU-
LALIESPENCE, MAYMILLERSULLIVAN, and WILLIS
RICHARDSON. It was performed more than two
decades later in Cleveland in the 1950s.“Black Dress, The”Dorothy West(1934)
A “short short story” about friendship and perfor-
mance by Bostonian DOROTHY WEST that ap-
peared in the May 1934 issue of OPPORTUNITY,the
official monthly magazine of the NATIONAL
URBANLEAGUE.
The story begins as the first-person narrator, a
childhood friend of Margaret Johnson, contem-
plates how best to entice her friend Margaret back
to her hometown to see the father from whom she
has been estranged for years. Margaret, an actress
who has to defend her love of the theater and her38 Black Damp