Gwendolyn Brooks: The Ballad of Rudolph Reed

Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.

"I am not hungry for berries.
I am not hungry for bread.
But hungry hungry for a house
Where at night a man in bed

"May never hear the plaster
Stir as if in pain.
May never hear the roaches
Falling like fat rain.

"Where never wife and children need
Go blinking through the gloom.
Where every room of many rooms
Will be full of room.

"Oh my home may have its east or west
Or north or south behind it.
All I know is I shall know it,
And fight for it when I find it."

The agent's steep and steady stare
Corroded to a grin.
Why you black old, tough old hell of a man,
Move your family in!

Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed,
Nary a curse cursed he,
But moved in his House. With his dark little wife,
And his dark little children three.

A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye
That squeezed into a slit.
But the Rudolph Reeds and children three
Were too joyous to notice it.

For were they not firm in a home of their own
With windows everywhere
And a beautiful banistered stair
And a front yard for flowers and a back for grass?

 

The first night, a rock, big as two fists.
The second, a rock big as three.
But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed.
(Though oaken as man could be.)

The third night, a silvery ring of glass.
Patience arched to endure,
But he looked, and lo! small Mabel's blood
Was staining her gaze so pure.

Then up did rise our Roodoplh Reed
And pressed the hand of his wife,
And went to the door with a thirty-four
And a beastly butcher knife.

He ran like a mad thing into the night
And the words in his mouth were stinking

By the time he had hurt his first white man
He was no longer thinking.

By the time he had hurt his fourth white man
Rudolph Reed was dead.
His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse.
"Nigger--" his neighbors said.

Small Mabel whimpered all night long,
For calling herself the cause.
Her oak-eyed mother did no thing
But change the bloody gauze.

This poem is making  a point about the way discrimination took place a long time ago. A man by the name of Rudolph Reed wanted to make a life for his family the same as whites so he moved them to somewhere that they could live life the same as others and be happy. He said he did not need food and he did not need bread, all he wanted was a place that him and his family could comfortably lay their head.  It was a dream of his to one day be able to provide this way for his family and he was not going to let anything get in his way, even it is was a “white only” neighborhood.  But once he got where he thought they would be able to enjoy their living standards, a big rock as big as two fists came through the window. Rudolph Reed and his family really just ignored it in a way until around the third night there. This is when his wife’s blood was seen and his patience was really gone by then. He had to come to his wife’s side to help her and by the end of the night, he was at the door with a butcher knife. He ran outside taking it out on the white man causing him harm and he was no longer thinking straight. Each time it continued to happen, all he thought about was defending his family. By the time he had hurt the fourth white man that attempted to attack him and his family, he was dead. The neighbors showed no remorse as his wife cried in the night blaming herself. Her mother did nothing at all but change the bloody gauze.