Lays In Summer Lands

Edited by Larry Eugene Rivers, Richard Matthews, Canter Brown, Jr.

Reviewed by Spessard Stone


The poetry and life of African American journalist, civil rights leader, editor, and poet John Willis Menard are presented in a new complete edition of his 1879 classic Lays In Summer Lands, edited by renowned historians Larry Eugene Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr., and poet Richard Matthews.

John Willis Menard of colored French Creole parentage was born April 3, 1838 at Kaskaskia, Illinois. Educated at an abolitionist school and at Iberia College in Ohio, Menard early achieved distinction. In 1860 he published An Address to the Free Colored People of Illinois and in 1862 became the first black to obtain a clerkship in the Interior Department in Washington, D.C. Sent to research Belize as a possible colony for the “Negro problem,” he on the expedition met Elizabeth, his Jamaican wife, by whom he would have three children.

In 1865 he relocated to the birth city of his parents, New Orleans, where he variously served as an inspector of customs, commissioner of streets, and edited the Free South and Standard. On November 3, 1868, he, was elected to Louisiana’s Second Congressional District, but, instead of being inducted as the first African American in Congress, the seat was awarded to his opponent as “it was too early to admit a Negro to the U. S. Congress.” He, however, became the first black to address Congress when he on February 27, 1869 spoke in behalf of his rightful office.

Resettling in Jacksonville, Florida, Menard resumed his activism. A prominent Republican, he was awarded a post office position, edited the Florida Sun, and was in the fall of 1873 elected to the state legislator. He was, however, rebuffed in two bids for Congress and adopted a critical role of his party. Democrat George F. Drew in 1877 awarded him by reappointing him as a justice of the peace, which Marcellus L. Stearns had first named him in 1874. In 1879 he compiled and published Lays In Summer Lands.

Menard, securing the post of an inspector of customs, removed to Key West where he became the most influential black editor of the 1880s with the Florida News aka Island City News as his forum. After 1884, he returned to Jacksonville where he battled for the rights and interests of blacks with the newspaper Southern Leader, which he continued to 1888.

In 1889, he accepted a clerkship in the census office and moved to Washington, D.C. where he died on October 8, 1893.

Lays In Summer Lands, Menard’s principal legacy, contains a catholic range of subjects, from political themes, to poems relating to geography, faith, and love. Noteworthy are “To President Lincoln,” “The Negro’s Lament,” “The Solid South,” “Florida,” “On the Banks of the St. Johns,” “Sabbath Eve Musings,” “Easter Hymn,” “Parted,” “Speak to Me Kindly,” “Adieu.”

Lays In Summer Lands contains 167 pages, including 63 poems, two essays, indexes, and 28 illustrations. Lays In Summer Lands in hardcover only will be published on February 15, 2002 by University of Tampa Press, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, FL 33606, telephone 813-253-6266. It costs $24.95. E-mail them at utpress@ut.edu.



Note: I received Lays In Summer Lands on January 14, 2002 from Canter Brown, Jr. I read it on January 15 and posted review on web site on January 17, 2002. This review was published in The Herald-Advocate (Wauchula, Fla.) of February 14, 2002.