Clayborn Merriweather [African-American]
Glancing through one of the volumes of poems of
Clayborn W. Merriweather, we found expressed therein comments from eminent
persons and reputable publications better than we could ever say it the author’s
singular gift as a poet.
From the Herald-Post came these words, “He has a
sense of beauty a flair for the right word and a message to deliver. Our regret
must be that we meet a genuine poet for the first time.” The Kentucky Masonic
Herald stated, “He holds the attention of those who love the art of literature
as it has not been the favor of a Negro to do for a long time.” Said Judge
Lorenzo K. Wood, “They are so full of the human element and so fragrant with
the divine control and abiding faith, that it is a relief to read and reread
them.” The last critic whom we quote is President Rufus B. Atwood of Kentucky
State college, “His works prove him a philosopher who has, in the words of
Matthew Arnold, enjoyed contact with ‘the best that has been thought and said
in the world.”
Reading the poems of Mr. Merriweather we find them
of a wide variety, sacred, satiric, spiritual, comic, philosophical, didactic. He
uses for his vehicle of thought. equally well..dialect and smoothly ironed out
verse..much in the fashion of Dunbar or whom he puts us so much in mind.”
Mr. Merriweather life history is as interesting as
his poems. He was born at Hopkinsville, Ky., May 7, 1869; attended common
schools in one-room log houses at a time when the school per capita for
teaching was fifty cents. Young
Merriweather always helped himself, working first on a form for twenty-five
cents a day, plowing, worming, suckering tobacco, hauling dead wood. For five
years from 1880-1884, inclusive, he worked for his clothes and one dollar a
month.
In 1884 the lad went to Earlington, Ky., to work as
a bootblack in his brother’s barber shop. In five years’ time he had managed to
save from his small earnings fifty dollars with which he entered State
university in Louisville. Merriweather “worked his way through college” –
serving in various capacities in private homes for a dollar and a half a week. With
this money he clothed himself, bought books, paid his tuition and his room
rent.
“My books and clothes,” Mr. Merriweather told us, “were
second-handed!”
Besides being a poet, Merriweather is an artist.
When he was asked about his interest, he said, “While I was at Earlington, I
developed a talent for the fine art, and my work in this connection won first
prize two years in succession at the white fair at Madisonville. My vehicles
were oil, pastel, pencil, and India Ink for etching. Twelve subjects in oil
were exhibited at the 135th Street “Y” in New York City. After four years of work at State university,
Merriweather returned to Hopkinsville to teach in the schools of Hopkins and
Christian counties. In 1869 he founded the Paducah Bee which became one of the
leading weeklies in western Kentucky. He
also established the New Age, a weekly newspaper at Hopkinsville.
While the author was living in Paducah he was
appointed as a state representative to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at
Buffalo, New York.
Merriweather has been prominent in the educational
circles of the state for many years. He is a member of the Kentucky Negro
Educational Association, at the annual sessions of which he had, for several
years, exhibited some of this art work.
Once he delivered an address on poetry; for several years served as one
of the judges of the state-wide spelling contests.
Active in fraternal circles, Merriweather attained
to the position of State Deputy Grand Master of the Masons. He is a thorough
student of the Bible and is one of the most able teachers of the Scripture in
the state.
Merriweather has studied law in Louisville, in
Detroit, and at Princeton and for more than thirty-five years was a successful
member of the bar in his hometown, Hopkinsville.
His works have been endorsed and praised by both
white and colored critics throughout the country; he is considered the leading
poet of his race in Kentucky.
“I was invited,” stated Merriwether, “by the state’s
leading historian to write a poem on Stephen Collins Foster. I compiled, with
the result that its preservation is secure in the archives of the Foster Museum
of the University of Pittsburgh. I was invited by the Curators of the
University of New York City to be present in the Senate of the university for
the unveiling of a bust and a tablet to the memory of Foster.”
Among his admirers in his native state, Merriweather
is known as the “Poet of the Pennyrile.” One of his most enthusiastic admirers
is Rev. Lucien V. Rule, Goshen, who has recently written a poem dedicated to
the friendship existing between him and Merriweather.
To us one of Merriweather’s most delightfully
entertaining and philosophical pieces is a poem in dialect – maybe because it
brings home the fact that there is in man a tendency to “Drag” another down;
because we have encountered so many “cut worms” along the way of life, - and
because we pray never to be branded as one ourselves. It is all the old matter
of the Golden Rule. We quote part of it: