Strike For Equal Rights Poem by Samuel Alfred Beadle

Think of the price of liberty,
Think of the lash and slavery,
Of lynch rule and its massacre
And strike for equal rights.


Say, must we longer trust the law,
Class-enacted to hide the flaw
Of the crimson hand that strikes to awe
And terrorize us into slaves?


Let him who trembles or has fears,
When the cowardly mob appears,
Receive a coward's meed and tears,
Death and a piece of hemp.


Where the American who would be
A renegade to liberty;
Because of fear would turn and flee,
When duty calls him here.


He should be yoked and bound for aye,
As long as night succeeds the day -
For liberty can only stay,
The meed of valiant men.


He who fears not the mob's alarm:
To him who would the traitors storm,
And fell them with a valiant arm,
Behold a freeman's meed!


Come the valiant, and come the brave,
Come all except the abject slave -
Let him fall in a bondman's grave -
And strike for liberty!


Come all the law abiding, come,
Where'er throughout the earth you roam,
And strike for native land and home,
For God and sacred life.