{
 "id": "georgia-douglas-johnson/the-true-american",
 "title": "The True American",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Georgia Douglas Johnson",
 "poet_slug": "georgia-douglas-johnson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1927,
  "venue": "The Crisis 34.2 (April 1927), as by “John Strong”",
  "note": "Located in the issue scan on disk, headed “The True American / By JOHN STRONG” in the “Poetry and Painting” feature, which the contents page lists as “Poems by John Strong, Effie Lee Newsome, Edward Silvera, Arna Bontemps, F. Marshall Davis”. All twelve lines agree with the corpus text. The Crisis 34.4 (June 1927) printed the correction on page 123: “The w.k. Printer’s Devil is loose again and has made us attribute to a mythical ‘John Strong’ and to a very real Frank Horne two poems—‘The True American’, in the April Crisis and ‘The Snarl’, last month. Of course it was Georgia Douglas Johnson who did them both.” The byline is the magazine’s error, not another hand, so it is recorded here rather than in `attribution`.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1927-04_34_2",
   "https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1927-06_34_4",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-the-true-american-1927"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/georgia-douglas-johnson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-the-heart-of-a-woman-full-text-1918",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/103153234",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-bronze-full-text-1922",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000781515",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/poems-by-georgia-douglas-johnson-in-the-new-negro-1925",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000340210",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-an-autumn-love-cycle-full-text-1928",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102777177",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/georgia-douglas-johnson-poems-published-in-the-crisis-1910-1926",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000502434",
   "https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/poems-published-in-the-messenger-magazine",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000056822",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000064962"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 12,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 64,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "America, here is your son, born of your iron heel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Black blood and red and white contend along this frame of steel.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The thorns deep in his brow are set and yet he does not cower,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He goes with neither fears nor tears to crucifixion hour.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor yet does hatred blur his view of mankind’s frail parade,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From his commanding triple coign, all prejudices fade.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ebbing nations coalesce in him and flow as one,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bright shining rainbow sweeping back to God at set of sun!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mark well the surety of tread, the new song high in air,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The new note in the nation’s throat, as permanent as prayer.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "America, regard your son, The Cosmopolitan,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pattern of posterity, The True American.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}