th sincere interest and appreciation W.
Allison Sweeney's poem, 'The Other Fellow's Burden.' All through Mr.
Sweeney's poem there is an invitation put in rather a delicate and
persuasive way, but nevertheless it is there, for the white man to put
himself in the negro's place and then to lay his hand upon his heart and
ask how he would like for the other fellow to treat him. If every man
who reads this poem will try sincerely to answer this question I believe
that Mr. Sweeney's poem will go a long way toward bringing about better
and more helpful conditions.

"Mr. Sweeney is, of course, a member of the Negro race and writes from
what might be called the inside. He knows of Negro aspirations, of Negro
strivings and of Negro accomplishments. He has had an experience of many
years as writer and lecturer for and to Negroes and he knows probably as
well as anyone wherein the Negro feels that 'the shoe is made to pinch.'
The poem, it seems to me, possesses intrinsic merit and I feel quite
sure that Mr. Sweeney's appeal to the great American people, for fair
play will not fall upon deaf ears. Booker T. Washington."

The "white man's burden" has been
told the world,
But what of the other fellow's--
The "lion's whelp"?

Lest you forget,
May he not lisp his?
Not in arrogance,
Not in resentment,
But that truth
May stand foursquare?

This then,
Is the Other Fellow's Burden.

* * * * *

Brought into existence
Through the enforced connivance
Of a helpless motherhood
Misused through generations--
America's darkest sin!--
There courses through his veins
In calm insistence--incriminating irony
Of the secrecy of blighting lust!
The best and the vilest blood
Of the South's variegated strain;
Her statesmen and her loafers,
Her chivalry and her ruffians.

Thus bred,
His impulses twisted
At the starting point
By brutality and sensuous savagery,
Should he be crucified?
Is it a cause for wonder
If beneath his skin of many hues--
Black, brown, yellow, white--
Flows the sullen flood
Of resentment for prenatal wrong
And forced humility?

Should it be a wonder
That the muddy life current
Eddying through his arteries,
Crossed with the good and the bad,
Poisoned with conflicting emotions,