It seems that lynching and prejudice and the overall evils committed to black people is a shared theme among “As the Lord Lives, He Is One of Our Mother’s Children” and Claude McKay's poems. THe question I would like to explore is "why continue to write about the atrocities done to an entire race even though much time is passing. Stories about lynching and persecution of African Americans seems in the distant future, but it really isnt. Slavery was only truly abolished about 130 years ago, that for some of us is just a few generations away. It would seem like the world that isn’t African American wants to just move on, but it is important to remember what happened so we are not doomed to repeat it to anyone else. Claude and Hopkins write in a time where they never personally saw slavery, they were born and lived into the 1900’s where we would like to think is a time where we would be above racism and persecution on the basis of one man’s skin. In Hopkins story about Stone, he is a truly innocent man who is educated, well brought up, and a good man, but he is on the run because there is an allegation or rumor basically that he killed this man that essentially made his life hell. Personally, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had killed him and ran, racism is wrong and morally impermissible. I just don’t understand how people of such a recent time period and not that far from ourselves could have such blind hate in a time where we attempt equality and liberty for all. But I think this is why these authors write, to remember what happened to their family and people. To live on with pride and show how good overcame evil, and that even in a dark oppressive time, there were still people like Rev. Mr. Stevens, who looked beyond what the law might have said, and made his own judgments on the subject of race and took action to prevent crime to an innocent man.
