Robert Earl Hayden

Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit on August 4, 1913 to Asa and Ruth Sheffey, who separated before his birth. He grew up in Detroit's poor neighbourhood called Paradise Valley. His childhood was

Frederick Douglass

by Robert Earl Hayden (1913–80)

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16

 When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful 
 And terrible thing, needful to man as air, 
 usable as earth; when it belongs at last to our children, 
 when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, 
 reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more 
 than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians: 
 this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro 
 beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world 
 where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, 

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