A student says to his teacher, “You talk about peace but you teach me fighting. How do you reconcile the two?”
The teacher answered, “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a garden in a war.”
We are still fighting for Civil Rights.
The New Black
Black is color of my life. Black are my lover’s eyes. Black her swaddling clothes. She races life in black stilettos, my, my, my. Black is life before creation. Black is life after the apocalypse. The night sky is Black crepe with junkie tracks we call stars. Black like me. Yes. Yes. Black is the color of my heart. Black are my tears. Black is my blood, It vanishes into the black earth. The pits of hell are black. My deeds are black. My future is black. My children are black. The stories I read them have black morals. My children will come to a black end. They are young, gifted and too black. Shoe shine black. Boot black. Tar baby black. Black gold. Black is beautiful. Black is where it’s at. Jazz is black. Didn’t you know. Blues is black. Black is blues. Just a variation. But it’s black. I read black. I buy black. I f**k black. God is Black. You didn’t know that either. Black is the road. Black is the fast car shuffling us to the brink of humiliation. The President is Black. It’s a black thing. That’s a black joke. Black is the long journey perforated by an occasional riot we call color. Black is what we close our eyes to. Remember that. Black is what we close our eyes to. And still we rise because what else are we to do. We are Black.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Black history should be annotated as Pre and Post Martin Luther King Jr. Before MLK, we were Colored, Negro and often boys, girls apes, coons, baboons, jigaboos and n****rs and lynched, murdered and bombed. After MLK we slowly became African American. I, personally, am Black. I resist being African American because it still looks, feels and quacks like 3/5 American. But since MLK was able to get race on a “Visible National Stage” we have continued to evolve, to become more human albeit not more likable until recently.
The 60’s were an incredible time. There is significance in it being 100 years after the Civil War. What should have been peace and prosperity was cold war, McCarthyism, Korea, Viet Nam, J. Edger Hoover and chickens coming home to roost. In the midst of it all Martin Luther King Jr. stood for Civil Rights which really should be read “HUMAN RIGHTS”. MLK starts with dignity for the formerly enslaved but soon encompasses the poor, the downtrodden and the immigrants identified on the Statue of Liberty.
Nobody likes a reformer but everyone appreciates one when reform is proved. We have yet to perfect it. Today’s headlines are filled with Civil Rights or do you believe sexual harassment is about something else. It’s the other side of the same problem. Someone out there with money, power and influence doesn’t value you for who you are or takes advantage of the status they impose upon you. So, it has taken 50 years to get sexual lynching and reverse castration out in the open. It is one step closer to Civil Rights/Human Rights in America. I continue and will always applaud Martin Luther King Jr. for getting the conversation and movement unstuck and started in my lifetime.
Fried Chicken & Philosophy 