Existing comment:
Rally Mohawks! Bring out your axes, and tell King George we'll pay no taxes on his foreign tea . . .
-- a song of 1773
Panel 3, 1954
This painting's caption comes from the first verse of a protest song sung by the Sons of Liberty, a secret organization fighting British taxation of the colonies. On the night of December 16, 1773, the colonists, disguised as members of the Mohawk Nation, boarded British ships to dump their cargo of tea into the Boston Harbor. Their revolutionary act quickly became known as the Boston Tea Party. Though no fighting actually took place, Lawrence recasts the charade as a violent combat of arms, fists, and axes between masked and unmasked figures.
A verse of the tea party's rallying song follows:
Rally Mohawks! bring out your axes,
And tell King George we'll pay no taxes
On his foreign tea;
His threats are vain, and vain to think
To force our girls and wives to drink
His vile Bohea!
Then rally boys, and hasten on
To meet our chiefs at the Green Dragon.
In Lawrence's Time:
To create Panel 3, Lawrence likely adapted imagery found in a popular history books of his time, including Secret History of the American Revolution (1941) and The Story of America in Pictures (1953) These books would have been available at the library in Harlem where he conducted research for the Struggle series. |