There are 263 Poems about Race

Bible Defense of Slavery
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Lines
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

“No, Master, Never!”
By Joshua McCarter Simpson

“Que Sera Sera”
By A. Van Jordan

1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer
By June Jordan

1994
By Lucille Clifton

from “The Octoroon”
By Albery Allson Whitman

Slave Sale: New Orleans
By Charles Reznikoff

A Black Man Talks of Reaping
By Arna Bontemps

A Contract. (For the Destruction and Rebuilding of Paterson
By Amiri Baraka

A Fable
By Etheridge Knight

A Gallup Swill-Hole; Or, Cantina Blues
By Clarence Major

A Map to the Next World
By Joy Harjo

A Negro Love Song
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

A New Story
By Simon Joseph Ortiz

A Poem about Intelligence for My Brothers and Sisters
By June Jordan

A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto
By Czeslaw Milosz

A Song for Soweto
By June Jordan

A Tenth Anniversary Photograph, 1952
By Miller Williams

A Wasp Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison
By Etheridge Knight

A Woman Speaks
By Audre Lorde

Africadian Petition (1783)
By George Elliott Clarke

Afterimages
By Audre Lorde

Alameda Street
By Douglas Kearney

America
By Claude McKay

American History
By Michael S. Harper

American Income
By Afaa Michael Weaver

American Roots: Moral Associations
By Primus St. John

An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly
By Jupiter Hammon

An African Elegy
By Robert Duncan

An American Tale of Sex and Death
By Kevin Stein

An Appeal to Women
By Sarah Louisa Forten

An Immigrant Woman
By Anne Winters

Anchorage
By Joy Harjo

Apollo
By Elizabeth Alexander

April 5, 1968
By Alan Williamson

At the Movie: Virginia, 1956
By Ellen Bryant Voigt

Away to Canada
By Joshua McCarter Simpson

Baby Villon
By Philip Levine

Babylon Revisited
By Amiri Baraka

backstage drama
By Thulani Davis

Baldwin
By E. Ethelbert Miller

Ballad of Birmingham
By Dudley Randall

Bartow Black
By Timothy Thomas Fortune

Battlefield
By Mark Turcotte

Beautiful Black Men
By Nikki Giovanni

Black Boys Play the Classics
By Toi Derricotte

Blue
By Carl Phillips

Blue
By Chris Abani

Booker T. and W.E.B.
By Dudley Randall

Boston Year
By Elizabeth Alexander

Brass Spittoons
By Langston Hughes

Brothers-American Drama
By James Weldon Johnson

Chant
By Tom Sleigh

Charles Sumner
By Charlotte L. Forten Grimké

Chicago
By Paul Engle

Chicago’s Congo
By Frank Marshall Davis

Childhood
By Margaret Walker

Choosing A Profession
By Mary Lamb

Coal
By Audre Lorde

Color in American History: An Essay
By Tom Disch

Cultural Stakes; or, How To Learn English as a Second Language
By Kevin A. González

Debridement
By Michael S. Harper

Deep South
By Thomas McGrath

Deliberate
By Amy Uyematsu

Diorama
By Atsuro Riley

Discrimination
By Kenneth Rexroth

Divine Epigrams: On the Baptized Ethiopian
By Richard Crashaw

Doña Josefina Counsels Doña Concepción Before Entering Sears
By Maurice Kilwein Guevara

Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League
By Joseph Seamon Cotter

Dreamer
By Primus St. John

Dreams
By Nikki Giovanni

Durban, South Africa—Some Notations of Value
By Chris Abani

Early Cinema
By Elizabeth Alexander

East of New Haven
By Carolyn M. Rodgers

Edwardian Christmas
By John Fuller

Elegy for a Soldier
By Marilyn Hacker

Eliza Harris
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Enslaved
By Claude McKay

Exile
By George Elliott Clarke

First Fire
By Camille T. Dungy

Flounder
By Natasha Trethewey

For Malcolm X
By Margaret Walker

For Malcolm, A Year After
By Etheridge Knight

For My People
By Margaret Walker

Frederick Douglass
By Robert E. Hayden

George & Rue: Pure, Virtuous Killers
By George Elliott Clarke

Giving a Manicure
By Minnie Bruce Pratt

Glow Flesh
By Victor Hernández Cruz

Gospel
By Fleda Brown

Grandfather
By Michael S. Harper

Guysborough Road Church
By George Elliott Clarke

Gwendolyn Brooks
By Haki Madhubuti

Hanging in Egypt with Breyten Breytenbach
By Chris Abani

Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
By Etheridge Knight

Harlem
By Langston Hughes

Harlem Sweeties
By Langston Hughes

He Imagined the Gorgeous Pattern of the New Skin and Settled for America
By Primus St. John

Here Where Coltrane Is
By Michael S. Harper

Hidden Harvest
By Rodrigo Toscano

History Lesson
By Natasha Trethewey

How I Discovered Poetry
By Marilyn Nelson

How It Was
By Czeslaw Milosz

How to Write the Great American Indian Novel
By Sherman Alexie

I, Too
By Langston Hughes

Immigrants in Our Own Land
By Jimmy Santiago Baca

Impossible to Tell
By Robert Pinsky

In a Bad House
By Henri Coulette

In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.
By June Jordan

In The Summer After “Issue Year” Winter (1873)
By Roberta Hill Whiteman

Indian Names
By Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Inside the Blues Whale
By Afaa Michael Weaver

Introductory to Second Edition
By Alfred Islay Walden

It Was Winter
By Czeslaw Milosz

jasper texas 1998
By Lucille Clifton

from John Brown's Body: "The years ride out from the world like couriers gone to a throne ..."
By Stephen Vincent Benét

from John Brown's Body: Invocation
By Stephen Vincent Benét

King’s Daughters, Home for Unwed Mothers, 1948
By C. D. Wright

Learning to Read
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Legacy
By Amiri Baraka

Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing
By James Weldon Johnson

Lift Every Voice and Sing
By James Weldon Johnson

Little Big Man
By Sherman Alexie

Little Brown Baby
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

Lothar’s Wife
By Colleen J. McElroy

Ma Rainey
By Sterling A. Brown

Madam’s Past History
By Langston Hughes

Malcolm X, February 1965
By E. Ethelbert Miller

Maximus, to Gloucester: Letter 2
By Charles Olson

Middle Passage
By Robert E. Hayden

Minor Miracle
By Marilyn Nelson

Mississippi
By E. Ethelbert Miller

Monuments
By Myra Sklarew

More Sonnets At Christmas
By Allen Tate

Morning Talk
By Roberta Hill Whiteman

mulberry fields
By Lucille Clifton

My Country ’Tis of Thee
By W. E. B. Du Bois

my dream about being white
By Lucille Clifton

Narrative: Ali
By Elizabeth Alexander

Native Woman
By A. F. Moritz

Negation
By George Elliott Clarke

New Folk
By Terrance Hayes

Nightmare Begins Responsibility
By Michael S. Harper

Nikki-Rosa
By Nikki Giovanni

Nina's Blues
By Cornelius Eady

No Images
By William Waring Cuney

O Black and Unknown Bards
By James Weldon Johnson

Ode to Big Trend
By Terrance Hayes

Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh! Susanna
By Stephen C. Foster

Old Folks at Home
By Stephen C. Foster

Old Lem
By Sterling A. Brown

On a Highway East of Selma, Alabama
By Gregory Orr

On Being Brought from Africa to America
By Phillis Wheatley

On Hearing a Description of a Prairie
By Frances Jane Crosby Van Alstyne

On Liberty and Slavery
By George Moses Horton

On the Loss of Energy (and Other Things)
By June Jordan

Original Pain
By George Elliott Clarke

Out of Our Hands
By Cathy Song

Passing
By Toi Derricotte

Philadelphia Flowers
By Roberta Hill Whiteman

Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like
By Nikki Giovanni

Poem for Nana
By June Jordan

Primer For Blacks
By Gwendolyn Brooks

Pullman Porter
By Robert W. Service

Question [1]
By Langston Hughes

Race
By Elizabeth Alexander

Reaching Yellow River
By Roberta Hill Whiteman

Reading Titus Andronicus In Three Mile Plains, N.S.
By George Elliott Clarke

Reapers
By Jean Toomer

Report from the Temple of Confessions in Old Chicano English
By Brenda Cárdenas

Report to Crazy Horse
By William E. Stafford

Reward
By Kevin Young

Riot
By Gwendolyn Brooks

Runagate Runagate
By Robert E. Hayden

Rwanda: Where Tears Have No Power
By Haki Madhubuti

Sales
By W. S. Di Piero

from Saying Grace
By Kevin Young

Seizure
By Lynn Emanuel

Self Portrait
By Frank Marshall Davis

Seventh Street
By Jean Toomer

She Had Some Horses
By Joy Harjo

Ships that Pass in the Night
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

Sisters in Arms
By Audre Lorde

skinny-dippin’ in the gene pool
By Thulani Davis

Slant
By Suji Kwock Kim

Slavery
By Hannah More

Some Are Dead and Some Are Living
By Colleen J. McElroy

Something Whispered in the Shakuhachi
By Garrett Hongo

Song of the Galley-Slaves
By Rudyard Kipling

Sorrow Home
By Margaret Walker

sorrow song
By Lucille Clifton

Soweto
By Edward Brathwaite

St. Peter Claver
By Toi Derricotte

Still I Rise
By Maya Angelou

Sugar Cane
By Alfred Corn

Survival
By Primus St. John

Swerve
By Kelle Groom

Sympathy
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Ballad of Nat Turner
By Robert E. Hayden

The Ballad of Othello Clemence
By George Elliott Clarke

The Birth of John Henry
By Melvin B. Tolson

The Blackstone Rangers
By Gwendolyn Brooks

The Blue-Eyed Precinct Worker
By Henri Coulette

The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off
By Cornelius Eady

The Cleaving
By Li-Young Lee

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race
By Vachel Lindsay

The Day Before Kindergarten: Taluca, Alabama, 1959
By Thylias Moss

The Feed
By M.L. Smoker

The Gospel of Barbecue
By Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

The Great Pax Whitie
By Nikki Giovanni

The Haunted Oak
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Idea of Ancestry
By Etheridge Knight

The Indian
By Elizabeth Kirkham Mathews

The Japanese Wife
By Charles Bukowski

The Laws of Motion
By Nikki Giovanni

The Legend
By Garrett Hongo

The Lesson
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Little Black Boy
By William Blake

The Love Letters of Helen Pitts Douglass
By Michael S. Harper

The Militance of a Photograph in the Passbook of a Bantu under Detention
By Michael S. Harper

The Militant Black Poet
By Dudley Randall

The Minneapolis Poem
By James Wright

The Natives of America
By Ann Plato

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes

The Old Front Gate
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Paradox
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

from The Poet Writes The Poem That Will Certainly Make Him Famous
By Douglas Kearney

The Powwow at the End of the World
By Sherman Alexie

The Schooner Flight
By Derek Walcott

The Shampoo (From The Nightingales)
By David Wojahn

The Sign in My Father’s Hands
By Martín Espada

The Slave Auction
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Slave Mother
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Song of the Smoke
By W. E. B. Du Bois

The South
By Emma Lazarus

The Subculture of the Wrongfully Accused
By Thylias Moss

The Things in Black Men’s Closets
By E. Ethelbert Miller

The Venus Hottentot
By Elizabeth Alexander

The Voyage Home
By Philip Appleman

The Weary Blues
By Langston Hughes

The White City
By Claude McKay

The Witnesses
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Woman Hanging From The Thirteenth Floor Window
By Joy Harjo

Theme for English B
By Langston Hughes

There Are Black
By Jimmy Santiago Baca

They Clapped
By Nikki Giovanni

To the Negro Farmers of the United States
By Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Toussaint L’Ouverture
By Henrietta Cordelia Ray

Us and Them
By Nomi Stone

Valentine’s Day Boxing at the Madison County Jail
By Kevin Stein

VooDoo/Love Magic
By Angela Jackson

Watercolour for Negro Expatriates in France
By George Elliott Clarke

We Real Cool
By Gwendolyn Brooks

We Wear the Mask
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

What Indians?
By Simon Joseph Ortiz

What the Birds Said
By John Greenleaf Whittier

When de Co'n Pone's Hot
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

Who Said It Was Simple
By Audre Lorde

Wi’-gi-e
By Elise Paschen

won't you celebrate with me
By Lucille Clifton

Worth
By Marilyn Nelson

[if your complexion is a mess]
By Harryette Mullen