Copy of original publication in collection.
Written by a Boston shoe-maker who served in Cuba during the Spanish-American War as assistant chaplain and sergeant-major in an African-American regiment, this anthology includes what may be the only Black poetry to come out of that conflict: The “Plea…” of the title, as well as War’s Inspiration, The Eighth Illinois in Cuba, The Eighth Returning From Cuba, and The Negro Volunteer. Written over a ten-year period, these poems, as James Robert Payne has pointed out, range from “early… innocence and idealism toward the war experience” to later “Black disillusionment”. The 1907 Plea…, condemning an “ungrateful land” that would not protect its Black citizens from “murders, lynchings, rape and lies” was written months after President Roosevelt unfairly approved the dishonorable discharge of 167 Black soldiers in the Brownsville incident (see next item in this catalogue). White’s autobiographic Foreword also records the inhuman mistreatment of his parents and grandparents while in slavery; and his own humiliation on returning from the War when he was refused service in segregated restaurants and pharmacies in Denver, St. Louis and Cincinnati - even in an Army Barracks in Kentucky - and was “threatened with lynching by a mob of Missouri whites” when he fought for his rights. Reprinted in the 1970s, this original edition is rarely found outside of institutional collections.