{
 "id": "james-weldon-johnson/the-black-mammy",
 "title": "The Black Mammy",
 "poet": "James Weldon Johnson",
 "poet_slug": "james-weldon-johnson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Fifty Years & Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "fifty-years-and-other-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 7,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearsother00johnrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17884"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/james-weldon-johnson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_the_National_Association_for_the_Adv/AAs-AQAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17884",
   "https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearsother00johnrich",
   "https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/johnson/johnson.html",
   "https://archive.org/details/godstrombonessev00johnso"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 16,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "O whitened head entwined in turban gay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O kind black face, O crude, but tender hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O foster-mother in whose arms there lay",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The race whose sons are masters of the land!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was thine arms that sheltered in their fold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was thine eyes that followed through the length",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of infant days these sons. In times of old",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was thy breast that nourished them to strength.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "So often hast thou to thy bosom pressed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The golden head, the face and brow of snow;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So often has it ’gainst thy broad, dark breast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lain, set off like a quickened cameo.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou simple soul, as cuddling down that babe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With thy sweet croon, so plaintive and so wild,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Came ne’er the thought to thee, swift like a stab,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That it some day might crush thine own black child?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}