Childhood

While Walker’s later poems would be classified as civil rights poems (specifically her 1970s collection Prophets for a New Day), “Childhood” was written and published in the 1940s in the years leading up to the civil rights movement. Still, “Childhood” falls within the literary category of African American protest poetry. Following in the footsteps of prominent poets, such as Langston Hughes, Walker’s poems give voice to Black Americans who have struggled. African American protest poetry and literature is defined as the following:

“...the practice within African American literature of bringing redress to the secondary status of [B]lack people, of attempting to achieve the acceptance of [B]lack people into the larger American body politic, of encouraging practitioners of democracy truly to live up to what democratic ideals on American soil mean” (“African American Protest Poetry.” National Humanities Center).

African American protest poetry is a literary tradition rooted in unearthing and sharing the struggles of Black Americans, beginning with slavery. The intention of this literary tradition is “to show inequalities among races and socio-economic groups in America and to encourage a transformation in the society that engenders such inequalities” (“African American Protest Poetry.