Blacklisted
Blacklisted - context Summary
Published in 1920
Published in 1920 in Smoke and Steel, "Blacklisted" reflects Sandburg’s engagement with labor struggles and the working-class desire for survival. The speaker questions the value of an inherited name versus the practical need to take a new identity to keep a job. The poem frames blacklisting and name-changing as pragmatic responses to economic pressure, resonating with Sandburg’s socialist politics and his own experience of manual work and industrial-era hardship.
Read Complete AnalysesWhy shall I keep the old name? What is a name anywhere anyway? A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child: A job is a job and I want to live, so Why does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by?
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