Veterans Day

I found this card several years ago, tucked within the pages of a Bible at the local Goodwill store. Razaf's name was familiar to me from popular music; as a lyricist, he collaborated with Eubie Blake (Memories of You) and Fats Waller (Ain't Misbehavin', Honeysuckle Rose).

But Razaf started out as a poet. According to Wikipedia, Razaf's early poems were published in 1917-18 in Voice, the first newspaper of the New Negro Movement.

This poem might have first been published during the first World War, then reprinted during World War II; it reveals the anguish felt by African Americans who saw their sons fight in wars to defend liberties and freedoms they had no access to themselves.