“Song of the Agitators”: 1852 poem set to music

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Song of the Agitators

“Cease to agitate!” we will,
When the slave whip’s sound is still;
When no more on guiltless limb
Fetters print their circlet grim;
When no hound athirst for blood
Scours the thorny Georgian wood;
When no mother’s pleading prayer,
On the sultry Southern air,
Quivereth out in accents wild,
“Master, give me back my child!”
   In the day when men shall be
   Brethren, equal-born, and free—
   Day for which we work and wait—
   We will “cease to agitate”!

When our statute books proclaim
To the world no more our shame,
And a freeman’s rights shall hold
Dearer than the Judas gold;
When the Polar Star shall give
Light to the last fugitive;
When our border lakes shall rise
On the last lone bondman’s eyes,
And their waves for him no more
Haste to clasp the Northern shore;
   In the day when men shall be
   Brethren, equal-born, and free—
   Day for which we work and wait—
   We will “cease to agitate”!

Written by an anonymous abolitionist during the days of race-based chattel slavery in the United States, this poem was originally published in the Ohio Star (Ravenna, OH) in 1852 and was reprinted shortly after in the Anti-Slavery Bugle (Oct. 9, 1852) (Lisbon, OH), the Liberator (Nov. 19, 1852) (Boston), and the Voice of the Fugitive (Dec. 16, 1852) (Windsor, Ontario).

The poem addresses those who, with the status quo working in their favor, would tell the enslaved to stop complaining about the injustices being perpetuated against them, stop ruffling feathers and demanding change, and instead just sit back and be content with the way things are.

The speaker of the poem responds with a defiant no; they and their fellow activists will stop agitating only when their cause is won. When the enslaver’s whip ceases to crack the air, and shackles no longer imprint themselves on ankles and wrists. When bloodhounds are no longer unleashed on freedom seekers, and children are no longer forcibly separated from their parents. When the country’s founding documents are scrubbed of their racism, and its legislation protects the rights of all Americans in equal measure. When the North Star guides home and the Great Lakes give passage to every last person out of bondage into liberation.

Those who work for justice today still often encounter the demand, “Cease to agitate!” “Stop stirring up trouble.” “Don’t be such a downer.” “Why are you so angry?” “Why can’t you just be grateful for the progress we’ve made?” “When will you ever be satisfied?”

Struck by its contemporary relevance, Detroit-born, Vancouver-based musical artist Khari Wendell McClelland adapted the above poem and set it to music. “I sing this song for all those who are living under tyranny, escaping tyranny, and searching for peace,” he wrote in a 2015 Facebook post sharing a demo video.

McClelland’s “Song of the Agitator” appears on his 2018 album, Freedom Singer. The album is dedicated to his great-great-great-grandmother Kizzy, who fled US slavery through the Underground Railroad to Windsor, Ontario, settling in Detroit after slavery was abolished.

Here’s a video of McClelland performing the song with Noah Walker for the Tiny Lights InSight Series in 2020:

While the first stanza he sings almost verbatim from the nineteenth-century source material, the second stanza he reworks to highlight present-day grievances:  

Now here we are today
Still pushing for equal pay
And these treaty rights don’t hold
They’re shiny like the Judas gold
The stain of blood remains
A mother’s only son slain
Our kids are crying out for more
Continually being ignored

And here’s how he’s adapted the refrain:

On that day we will be
Family, equal-born, and free
Dawn will come, night will cease
We’ll rejoice, mind at ease
For that day we’ll work and wait
That’s when we’ll cease to agitate

In a Geopoetics podcast interview that aired February 25, 2023, McClelland said, “For some of us, it’s been hundreds of years of incredible terror. And, you know, it’s a great luxury to feel in this moment like something’s wrong.” He continues, “It’s good to be agitated—to want to make things be different. When we start to become a little too comfortable with things being out of sort, being unjust, that’s where . . . it’s a problem. . . . Agitation is actually . . . good fuel.”

About the images above:

The Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia, was erected in 1890 during the Jim Crow era to glorify the Confederate general (who fought against the Union to preserve slavery). A bronze equestrian statue atop a giant plinth in the center of one of the historic city’s traffic circles, it had been controversial from the beginning, with many of Richmond’s Black residents regarding it as an oppressive and traumatic presence.  

After the murder of George Floyd, the monument became an epicenter of Black Lives Matter protests as well as a site of vandalism, and Virginia governor Ralph Northam announced on June 4, 2020, that it would be removed. While the legality of that intent was being litigated, light projection artist and Richmonder Dustin Klein, later joined by collaborator Alex Criqui, cast nightly image projections onto the statue—first of Black victims of police violence, and then of Black activists, writers, theologians, artists, and politicians and associated quotes. In October 2020, the graffiti-covered, image-lit Robert E. Lee Monument was declared the most influential American protest artwork since World War II by the New York Times.

On September 2, 2021, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld Northam’s decision, and the statue was removed shortly after.

To view more photos and learn more about Klein and Criqui’s Reclaiming the Monument project, see www.reclaimingthemonument.com.