Corporal Charles Frederick White was an early 20th-century African American poet who penned a detailed description of an American boy's Halloween in his 1908 poem "Hallowe'en", which opens with this stanza:
Last night was Hallowe’en, you know;
The cowbells rang, the horns did blow,
The goblins stalked o’er stones and planks
And small boys played their annual pranks.
