We used to think the negro didn’t count for very much—
Light-fingered in the melon patch, and chicken yard, and such;
Much mixed in point of morals and absurd in point of dress,
The butt of droll cartoonists and the target of the press;
But we’ve got to reconstruct our views on color, more or less,
Now we know about the Tenth at La Quasina!
When a rain of shot was falling, with a song upon his lips,
In the horror where such gallant lives went out in death’s eclipse,
Face to face with Spanish bullets, on the slope of San Juan,
The negro soldier showed himself another type of man;