Do you know what poem this is called--I think--'Biography,' about a crowd watching a lynching?

September 9, 2004 12:41 PM

I'm trying to locate a poem called "Biography" (I think) by an author whose name I cannot remember. The poem was about a crowd of people standing around watching what I believe was a slave hanging. I want to use the poem for my lit class and I cannot find my copy anywhere, cannot remember the author's name and cannot locate it through google. In fact, I may not even have the title correct. help?
posted by archimago to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

"Strange Fruit" by Lewis Allen is a poem about a lynching. It might not be the one you're looking for, but it's similar and may give you something else to use for your lit class if you can't find the "Biography" one.
posted by bitpart at 1:44 PM on September 9, 2004

Is it Langston Hughes? He has a lot of poems about lynching. "Lynching Song" and "Silhouette" are on this page.
posted by GaelFC at 1:45 PM on September 9, 2004

Claude McKay's The Lynching is rather well-known. Or perhaps you mean The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, a fictitious account which includes a lynching sequence, seen here with other literary references to lynching.
posted by dhartung at 10:01 PM on September 9, 2004

Response by poster: thanks all for the help. It definitely wasn't Hughes. It was someone who I had never heard of before. Someday I will find this poem again. But the links you provided are interesting and I may be able to use some of this as well.
posted by archimago at 6:18 AM on September 10, 2004