Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr.

Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr. was born on February 2, 1861, near Bardstown, Kentucky in the especially racially charged period two years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Cotter’s mother, born Martha Vaughn,

Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League

by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. (1861–1949)

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16

'Tis strange indeed to hear us plead

For selling and for buying

When yesterday we said: “Away

With all good things but dying.”

The world's ago, and we're agog

To have our first brief inning;

So let's away through surge and fog

However slight the winning.

What deeds have sprung from plow and pick!

Click here for complete poem