Incident - Countee Cullen (1925)

Once riding in old Baltimore,Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,

I saw a BaltimoreanKeep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked outHis tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore

From May until December;Of all the things that happened there

That’s all that I remember.’