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Note: Langston Hughes wrote this poem about the Underground Railroad
which Harriet Tubman conducted.
I
read in the papers about the Freedom Train
I heard on the radio
about the Freedom Train
I seen folks talking about the Freedom
Train
Lord, I've been a-waitin for the Freedom
Train!
Washington, Richmond, Durham, Chatanooga, Atlanta
Way
cross Georgia.
Lord, Lord, Lord
Lord, way down in Dixie the
only trains I see
Got a Jim Crow coach set aside for me.
I
hope their ain't no Jim Crow on the Freedom Train,
No back door
entrance to the Freedom Train,
No sign FOR COLORED on the
Freedom Train,
No WHITE FOLKS ONLY on the Freedom Train.
I'm
gonna check up.
I'm gonna check up on this
Freedom Train.
Who
is the engineer on the Freedom Train?
Can a coal-black man drive
the Freedom Train?
Or am I still a porter on the Freedom
Train?
Is there ballot boxes on the Freedom Train?
Do
colored folks vote on the Freedom Train?
When it stops in
Mississippi, will it be made plain
Everybody's got a right to
board the Freedom Train?
I'm
gonna check up.
I'm gonna check up on this
Freedom Train.
The
Birmingham station's marked COLORED and WHITE.
The white folks
go left
The colored go right.
They even got a segregated
lane.
Is that the way to get aboard the Freedom Train?
I'm
gonna check up.
I'm gonna check up on this
Freedom Train.
If
my children ask me, Daddy, please explain
Why a Jim Crow
stations for the Freedom Train?
What shall I tell my
children?
You tell me, cause freedom ain't freedom when a man
ain't free.
My
brother named Jimmy died at Anzio
He died for real, and it
wasn't no show.
Is this here freedom on the Freedom Train really
freedom or a show again?
Now
let the Freedom Train come zooming down the track
Gleaming in
the sunlight for white and black
Not stoppin' at no stations
marked COLORED nor WHITE,
Just stoppin' in the fields in the
broad daylight,
Stoppin' in the country in the wide-open
air
Where there never was a Jim Crow sign nowhere,
And No
Lilly-White Committees, politicians of note,
Nor poll tax layer
through which colored can't vote
And there won't be no kinda
color lines
The Freedom Train will be yours
And mine.
Then
maybe from their graves in Anzio
Black men and white will say,
We want it so!
Black men and white will say, Ain't it fine?
At
home they got a Freedom train,
A Freedom train,
That's
yours and mine!
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