location, they d run to their hotels with the revolvers, and he was so traumatized by this, one day he snuck off of work and went into a railroad bathroom, and scratched out this sonett which he called, if he must day. the last line is the far outnumbered, let us show men will face the murderous cowardly pack, pressed to the walls, dying but fighting back. that poem doesn t mention race at all. and it was published in this little socialist magazine in july of 1919. and as soon as it was published, every black publication in america republished it and every black person knew it, and they knew it for a reason. 1919 was the year that black america woke up politically and fought back in with politics and the courts and also in the streets, and to me it s an amazing part of american history that has been forgotten or and this book is an effort to try to recover it because i think it played a crucial role in the creation of the civil rights movement that came later. it really