Aunt Hannah Jackson
Despite her sixty years Aunt Hannah Jackson rubs on other people’s clothes.
Time has played havoc with her eyes and turned to gray her parched hair.
But her tongue is nimble and she talks to herself.
All day she talks to herself about her neighbors and her friends and the man she loved.
Yes, Aunt Hannah Jackson loved even as you and I and Wun Hop Sing.
“He was a good man,” she says, “but a fool.”
“So am I a fool and Mrs. Lee a fool and this Mrs. Goldstein that I work for a fool.”
“All of us are fools.”
For rubbing on other people’s clothes Aunt Hannah Jackson gets a dollar and fifty cents a day and a worn out dress on Christmas.
For talking to herself Aunt Hannah Jackson gets a smile as we call her a good natured fool.
This poem is in the public domain, and originally appeared in Others for 1919; An Anthology of the New Verse (Nicholas L. Brown, 1920).
Fenton Johnson
Fenton Johnson was born in Chicago in 1888. He is regarded as a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson was born to Elijah, a railroad porter and one of the wealthiest African American Chicagoans, and Jesse (née Taylor). Johnson enrolled at the University of Chicago and attended both Northwestern University and Columbia University’s School of Journalism.