Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Trayvon Martin and the Persistence of Insistence
I wrote this poem, "Why Am I Here" and its prologue sometime in the early nineties and have read it many times over the last twenty(give or take a few) years. This matter of young people dying for the mere fact of being black is abomination that should not be rested on the shoulders of our children.
The Prologue
August 28, 1955, young Emmett Till, while visiting his grandparents in Money, Mississippi, was beaten, shot to death and thrown into the river for the dubious offense of saying "Bye, Baby" to a white woman.
September 15, 1963 - Only eighteen days after the exuberant March On Washington, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, were killed when their Birmingham, Alabama Bible class was bombed by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
August 23, 1990 - Yusuf Hawkins, an honors student from Brooklyn, New York, while in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York, looking for a used car to buy, was brutally beaten to death by a gang of young white men because he was in "their" neighborhood.
The shocking news of each of these deaths reverberated throughout the land. The murder of Emmet Till sparked a generation of young people, his peers, to become the willing workers in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's. The bomb killing of the four young girls in Birmingham redoubled the outrage of a generation and shattered any illusion that this movement for freedom was to be simple or safe. The bludgeoning of Yusuf Hawkins was a brutal reminder of an unfinished agenda. Over 7000 people took to the streets to protest his killing.
Young people of every generation have been martyrs. These three atrocities, unfortunately, are only representative of hundreds and hundreds of young Americans of African descent who have been cut down in the tender stages of their lives. Young people for whom we have worked so hard that they might have a better life. Young people needed in the lifelong movement toward a better world.
We who survive, who live, must have a commitment to continue the work set in motion many generations ago, that to the day of our freedom, total freedom, we must ever be workers on behalf of our people. Above all, we must never forget. To quote philosopher George Santayana,' Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."
The following poem was inspired by a 1990 news clipping from my friend, Mrs. Valencia King Nelson, reporting that an Alabama man who remembered was soliciting funds to have a headstone place on the unmarked grave of Addie Mae Collins, one of the four girls killed in the 1963 church bombing.
The Poem
Why Am I Here
To remind you
Of the innocent child
Of the promise
Unfulfilled
To remind you
Of Yusuf Hawkins
Reminding you
Of Emmitt Till
Of four girls swaddled
In unheralded graves
Young unwitting warriors
Forgotten
Of infant trees
On forsaken lots
Cut in stride
Toward the dream
Young blood reddening
Mississippi mud
Alabama clay
New York streets
Young hearts
Stilled mid-beat
Tender memories
Waiting
Tragic martyrs
Shining
The Prologue
August 28, 1955, young Emmett Till, while visiting his grandparents in Money, Mississippi, was beaten, shot to death and thrown into the river for the dubious offense of saying "Bye, Baby" to a white woman.
September 15, 1963 - Only eighteen days after the exuberant March On Washington, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, were killed when their Birmingham, Alabama Bible class was bombed by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
August 23, 1990 - Yusuf Hawkins, an honors student from Brooklyn, New York, while in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Queens, New York, looking for a used car to buy, was brutally beaten to death by a gang of young white men because he was in "their" neighborhood.
The shocking news of each of these deaths reverberated throughout the land. The murder of Emmet Till sparked a generation of young people, his peers, to become the willing workers in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's. The bomb killing of the four young girls in Birmingham redoubled the outrage of a generation and shattered any illusion that this movement for freedom was to be simple or safe. The bludgeoning of Yusuf Hawkins was a brutal reminder of an unfinished agenda. Over 7000 people took to the streets to protest his killing.
Young people of every generation have been martyrs. These three atrocities, unfortunately, are only representative of hundreds and hundreds of young Americans of African descent who have been cut down in the tender stages of their lives. Young people for whom we have worked so hard that they might have a better life. Young people needed in the lifelong movement toward a better world.
We who survive, who live, must have a commitment to continue the work set in motion many generations ago, that to the day of our freedom, total freedom, we must ever be workers on behalf of our people. Above all, we must never forget. To quote philosopher George Santayana,' Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."
The following poem was inspired by a 1990 news clipping from my friend, Mrs. Valencia King Nelson, reporting that an Alabama man who remembered was soliciting funds to have a headstone place on the unmarked grave of Addie Mae Collins, one of the four girls killed in the 1963 church bombing.
The Poem
Why Am I Here
To remind you
Of the innocent child
Of the promise
Unfulfilled
To remind you
Of Yusuf Hawkins
Reminding you
Of Emmitt Till
Of four girls swaddled
In unheralded graves
Young unwitting warriors
Forgotten
Of infant trees
On forsaken lots
Cut in stride
Toward the dream
Young blood reddening
Mississippi mud
Alabama clay
New York streets
Young hearts
Stilled mid-beat
Tender memories
Waiting
Tragic martyrs
Shining
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