Farewell To Claudia Jones---Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (lyrics) and Bob A. Feldman (music)
Channel: protestfolk
Date: 2016-02-10

A folk song from 2015 with lyrics from poem that U.S. political prisoner and labor movement activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn wrote in 1955, while imprisoned in Alderson, West Virginia, shortly after another U.S. political prisoner, African-American civil rights and labor movement activist Claudia Jones was released from Alderson federal prison prior to later being deported to UK by U.S. government.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn's lyrics/poem:

Nearer and nearer drew this day, dear comrade
When I from you sadly part,
Day after day, a dark foreboding sorrow
Crept through my anxious heart.

No more to see you striding down the pathway,
No more to see your smiling eyes and face
No more to hear your gay and pealing laughter,
No more to feel your love, in this sad place.

How I will miss you, words will fail to utter,
I am alone, my thoughts unshared, these weary days
I feel bereft and empty, on this dreary and gray morning,
Facing my lonely future, hemmed by prison ways.

Sometimes I feel you've never been in Alderson,
So full of life, so detached from here you seem,
So proud of walk, of talk, of work, of being,
Your presence here is like a fading dream.

Yet as the sun shines now, through fog and darkness,
I feel a sudden joy that you are gone,
That once again you walk the streets of Harlem,
That today for you at least is Freedom's dawn.

I will be strong in our common faith, dear comrade,
I will be self-sufficient, to our ideals firm and true,
I will be strong to keep my mind and soul outside a prison,
Inspired by ever loving memories of you.