Melvin B. Tolson was born in Moberly, Missouri, the eldest son of a Methodist preacher. His first published poem, about the sinking of the Titanic, appeared in an Iowa newspaper when Tolson was fourteen. In 1947, he was named poet laureate of Liberia and wrote Libretto for the Republic of Liberia to celebrate the centennial of the small African republic founded by freed American slaves. He called for a “New Negro Poetry” suitable to the modern “age of T.S. Eliot.” He also said, wryly, “My poetry is of the proletariat, by the proletariat, and for the bourgeoisie.” Harlem Gallery was published in 1965, a year before Tolson died of abdominal cancer.

(Brief biography from The Oxford Book of American Poetry, 2006 edition)

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Sootie Joe

The years had rubbed out his youth,
But his fellows ranked him still
As a chimney sweep without a peer…
Whether he raced a weighted corset
Up and down the throat of a freakish flue,
Or, from a chair of rope,
His eyes goggled and his mouth veiled,
He wielded his scraping knife
Through the walled-in darkness.

The soot from ancient chimneys
Had wormed itself into his face and hands.
The four winds had belabored the grime on him.
The sun had trifled with his ebony skin
And left ashen spots.

Sometimes Sootie Joe’s wealthy customers
Heard his singing a song that gave them pause:

I’s a chimney sweeper, a chimney sweeper,
I’s black as the blackest night.
I’s a chimney sweeper, a chimney sweeper,
And the world don’t treat me right.
But somebody hasta black hisself
For somebody else to stay white.

— Melvin B. Tolson