From the very beginning of “The Black Man’s Burden,” Johnson excoriates the abuse of power in oppressing the powerless. The refrain “Pile on the Black Man’s Burden” is a direct response to Rudyard Kipling’s “Take up the White Man’s Burden,” and in both cases, it is understood that the white man has agency. He can decide whether or not to take up his burden—which, as Johnson points out, is not so very burdensome—whereas the Black man has no choice about being the passive recipient of burdens piled on his back.

The power imbalance, and the advantage the white man takes of it, is emphasized throughout the poem. Johnson points out that the colonists fight “clubs and arrows” with rifles. But he suggests ironically that this is too much trouble for them and that they should stay at home, where they can continue to oppress the Black population with relative convenience. He observes that the laws and customs are tainted with Jim Crow racism, but even these corrupt laws are not censured, as the nation winks at the “fiendish midnight deed” of rape or murder.

Finally, the unjust and oppressive power of man is contrasted with the just power of God, which will eventually overwhelm the tyranny of the white man. This will happen before the white man breaks the Black man with his oppression, since the burdens on the Black man’s shoulders can be piled up to reach heaven without ever breaking his spirit. This metaphor grants the Black man his own just power in his ability to bear infinite suffering.

H. T. Johnson does not use the word “white” in “The Black Man’s Burden.” But white America is nonetheless assumed to be the addressee of the poem, the one piling the burdens on the shoulders of the eponymous Black man, as well as the one looking around the world for his next target. In the second stanza, the poet refers to “Red” and “Brown” men who, like the Black man, are targets of white racism. The “Red Man” is a derogatory reference to the Native Americans whose land the white man has stolen, while the “Brown Man” is the one who will next receive oppressive treatment.

In this context, the “Brown Man” may be read as a reference to Filipino people, since Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” was written to promote American imperialism in the Philippines. However, there was American imperial aggression in other regions as well, including Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands. The point is that the white man will not live in peace with other ethnic and racial groups, treating them instead with prejudice, contempt, and violence.

While Kipling sees the white man as a long-suffering father figure, patiently attempting to unite the less-civilized nations of the world under his benign rule, Johnson depicts him as a predatory menace to anyone who is not white. It is part of the proof of this thesis that the monstrous predator to whom the poem makes constant reference need not even be identified. Everyone knows who is committing these terrible deeds.

H. T. Johnson was a preacher, and “The Black Man’s Burden was first published in the Christian Recorder , a journal affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It can be read as a sermon in verse, warning of the wrath of God, which white Americans are continually provoking through their pride and injustice. In this sense, it echoes the great revivalist sermons preached in America in the late nineteenth century, as well as those in...