the people their sins an’ bein’ a sign unto them. Afterwards I told the Lord I wanted another name, ’cause everybody else had two names, an’ the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people.”
The poem follows, with the author’s note on the saying of Sojourner Truth which occasioned it:
ORIFLAMME
I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old mammy would sit out of doors in the evenings and look up at the stars and groan, and I would say, ‘Mammy, what makes you groan so?’ And she would say, ‘I am groaning to think of my poor children; they do not know where I be and I don’t know where they be. I look up at the stars and they look up at the stars!’—Sojourner Truth.
I think I see her sitting bowed and black,
Stricken and seared wtih slavery’s mortal scars,
Reft of her children, lonely, anguished, yet
Still looking at the stars.
Symbolic mother, we thy myriad sons,
Pounding our stubborn hearts on Freedom’s bars,
Clutching our birthright, fight with faces set,
Still visioning the stars!
"Still visioning the stars’—that is the idealism of the Negro. The soul of Sojourner Truth goes marching on, star-led.
