An Appeal to My Countrywomen + 

You can sigh o’er the sad-eyed Armenian + 

Who weeps in her desolate home. + 

You can mourn o’er the exile of Russia + 

From kindred and friends doomed to roam. + 

You can pity the men who have woven + 

From passion and appetite chains + 

To coil with a terrible tension + 

Around their heart-strings and brains. + 

You can sorrow o’er little children + 

Disinherited from their birth, + 

The wee waifs and toddlers neglected, + 

Robbed of sunshine, music and mirth. + 

For beasts you have gentle compassion; + 

Your mercy and pity they share. + 

For the wretched, outcast and fallen + 

You have tenderness, love and care. + 

But hark! from our Southland are floating + 

Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain, + 

And women heart-stricken are weeping + 

Over their tortured and their slain. + 

On their brows the sun has left traces; + 

Shrink not from their sorrow in scorn, + 

When they entered the threshold of being + 

The children of a King were born. + 

Each comes as a guest to the table + 

The hand of our God has outspread, + 

To fountains that ever leap upward, + 

To share in the soil we all tread. + 

When ye plead for the wrecked and fallen, + 

The exile from far-distant shores, + 

Remember that men are still wasting + 

Life’s crimson around your own doors. + 

Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters, + 

Just a plea, a prayer or a tear, + 

For mothers who dwell ’neath the shadows + 

Of agony, hatred and fear? + 

Men may tread down the poor and lowly, + 

May crush them in anger and hate, + 

But surely the mills of God’s justice + 

Will grind out the grist of their fate. + 

Oh, people sin-laden and guilty, + 

So lusty and proud in your prime, + 

The sharp sickles of God’s retribution + 

Will gather your harvest of crime. + 

Weep not, oh my well-sheltered sisters, + 

Weep not for the Negro alone, + 

But weep for your sons who must gather + 

The crops which their fathers have sown. + 

Go read on the tombstones of nations + 

Of chieftains who masterful trod, + 

The sentence which time has engraven, + 

That they had forgotten their God. + 

’Tis the judgment of God that men reap + 

The tares which in madness they sow, + 

Sorrow follows the footsteps of crime, + 

And Sin is the consort of Woe. + 