“Entering Chicago”

Editors’ Note: This prose poem appears as part of the introductory material in the first (1927) volume of Frederick H. H. Robb’s remarkable compilation, The Intercollegian Wonder Book or the Negro in Chicago 1779–1927. “Entering Chicago” is attributed there to “J. M. Davis,” but internal and external evidence convince us that this was in fact contributed by journalist and poet Frank Marshall Davis shortly after his arrival in Chicago from his native Kansas. As such, the piece marks the ongoing “migration of the talented tenth” to the Black Metropolis, highlights the ubiquity of the railroad train as icon of Chicago’s modern moment, evidences Davis’s early efforts in free verse influenced by Carl Sandburg and Fenton Johnson, and prefigures the documentary spirit that would animate the most memorable works by writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance....