In honor of the 20th century poet, Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer, the Jasper Project is delighted to announce a new project, the Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer Poetry Chapbook Prize for SC BIPOC poets.
Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer (1868-1936) was a teacher and social activist in Orangeburg, SC. Born in Pickens, SC, she taught at the Normal and Grammar Schools at Claflin College for 40 years. Her published anthology of poems Prejudice Unveiled and Other Poems (1907) examined the Jim Crow South’s propensity for lynching, racism, and social injustice. Moorer was also an advocate for women’s suffrage in South Carolina, especially in the Methodist Church.
The purpose of the Lizelia August Jenkins Moorer Prize, affectionately called the Lizelia Prize, is to offer a first-time BIPOC poet from SC a publishing contract with Muddy Ford Press to publish their debut chapbook under the guidance of an established poet. The vision of Dr. Len Lawson, who is a member of the Jasper Project board of directors and the author, editor, or co-editor of four books of poetry, Lawson will also serve as project manager as well as editor of the winner’s chapbook and will collaborate with the winner on the construction of the book.
Submissions are closed until next year.
Entry Details & Requirements
Must be a South Carolina BIPOC poets who has yet to publish a book of poetry.
Submit 30-40 single spaced numbered pages in Times New Roman 12pt and include a cover sheet with your name and manuscript title. Your name should not appear on the manuscript.
The winning submission will receive publication via Muddy Ford Press, a cash prize of $250, and ten author copies of the book.
Submissions should be in the form of a Word doc and should be sent to lizeliapoetry@gmail.com.
Our Judge - 2022
Raena Shirali is a poet, editor, and educator from Charleston, South Carolina. Her first book, GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and her forthcoming collection, summonings, won the 2021 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue. She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University Shirali and is an Assistant Professor of English at Holy Family University, where she serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere.
Jim Crow Cars.
by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
If within the cruel Southland you have chanced to take a ride,
You the Jim Crow cars have noticed, how they crush a Negro's pride,
How he pays a first class passage and a second class receives,
Gets the worst accommodations ev'ry friend of truth believes.
'Tis the rule that all conductors, in the service of the train,
Practice gross discriminations on the Negro—such is plain—
If a drunkard is a white man, at his mercy Negroes are,
Legalized humiliation is the Negro Jim Crow car.
'Tis a license given white men, they may go just where they please,
In the white man's car or Negro's will they move with perfect ease,
If complaint is made by Negroes the conductor will go out
Till the whites are through carousing, then he shows himself about.
They will often raise a riot, butcher up the Negroes there,
Unmolested will they quarrel, use their pistols,rant and swear,
They will smoke among the ladies though offensive the cigar;
'Tis the place to drink their whiskey, in the Negro Jim Crow car.
If a Negro shows resistance to his treatment by a tough,
At some station he's arrested for the same, though not enough,
He is thrashed or lynched or tortured as will please the demon's rage,
Mobbed, of course, by "unknown parties," thus is closed the darkened page.
If a lunatic is carried, white or black, it is the same,
Or a criminal is taken to the prison-house in shame,
In the Negro car he's ushered with the sheriff at his side,
Out of deference for white men in their car he scorns to ride.
We despise a Negro's manhood, says the Southland, and expect,
All supremacy for white men—black men's rights we'll not protect,
This the Negro bears with patience for the nation bows to might,
Wrong has borne aloft its colors disregarding what is right.
This is called a Christian nation, but we fail to understand,
How the teachings of the Bible can with such a system band;
Purest love that knows no evil can alone the story tell,
How to banish such abuses, how to treat a neighbor well.
