Voice of Humanity: Song of the New World
Boston, U.S.A. The Christopher Publishing House, 1952. 8” x 5½”. Cloth over boards, spine and title gilt, original jacket. Pp. 46. Very good due to several small bites and chips from backstrip and top edge of jacket; rear hinge a tad loose but holding; internally very good plus with a touch of scattered spotting. Signed by the author on ffep.
This is an epic poem by an African American medical doctor and World War II psychiatrist, John Sinclair Perry.
Dr. John Sinclair Perry was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina and graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh. He studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, intending to become a professional violinist, before witnessing an operation in the Boston City Hospital and altering his career trajectory. Perry owned and operated the Mercy Hospital in Hamlet, North Carolina and practiced in Wilmington before moving to Washington, D.C. There he had a distinguished career in neuropsychiatry, serving both at St. Elizabeth's Hospital and the old Freedmen's Hospital (now the hospital of Howard University). He was president of the Medico-Chirurgical Society of the District of Columbia (the first society for African American doctors in the United States) and a member of the committee which successfully negotiated the admission of Black physicians into the Medical Society of D.C. Perry also worked for the Psychiatric Division of the Fort Myer Examining Board during World War II. He died in 1962.
This long and passionate poem unfolds a journey through history, covering the settling of America, the blight of slavery and racial injustice: “Not 'colored', as some thus do say, / But by Nature made; born this way; / Some say, 'n****r' (misnomers hurl): / In truth, 'New Race of the New World'.” The ode careens through abolition to the settlement of the West, the Spanish American War, the rise of dictators and World War II. Perry questioned what was to come: “What then brings the dim tomorrow? / Is it but the reign of Sorrow? / Will former things soon pass away? / Does there now dawn a better day?” He implored for a “Song of the New World”:
“Then sing of him whose muscles tense / Earn 'fruit of Earth', his recompense! / Oh! Sing of him with sweated brow - / With mighty grasp on sledge and plough: / This man of works who lives to do - / His aiding strength will pull us thru! / Of him a song, I pray you give; / And thru the ages let it live!”
This volume was reviewed in the 1952 Journal of the National Medical Association, a group that acknowledged it “has not numbered many poets in its ranks . . . his book deserves a place on our shelves.”
An epic poem by an accomplished African American doctor. Reasonably well-represented in institutions (OCLC shows 19 holdings), this a lovely, signed copy. Very good. Item #8045
Price: $850.00