Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/203

Rh His mother died and left him almost in the cradle. The orphanage which became his refuge gave him at least food, shelter, and schooling to the fourth grade. Then he was given to a Kentucky family to be reared. It was virtual slavery, and the boy ran away from over-work and beatings. Making his escape to Cincinnati he was befriended by a traveling salesman and began to find himself. At eleven years of age, some of his verses were printed in a Cincinnati daily with “Author Unknown” attached. He now made his way to Berea and worked his way for two years in that good old college. Then for three years he worked his way in Tuskegee.

We next find him in Iowa, married; then in North Carolina, teaching school; then in Ohio, working in steel mills. This last was his employment until about two years ago. His short stories and poems are right out of his life. In the former the peonage system, prevalent in some sections of the South, and the cruelties of the convict labor