The first poem I offer you today, dear readers, is an excerpt from “A Wreath for Emmett Till” by Marilyn Nelson. The original poem is 15 sonnets, and is published as an illustrated narrative. In 1955, Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy from Illinois who was visiting his cousins in Mississippi. He didn’t fully understand the difference between the veiled, subtle racism of the north and the raw, visceral racism of the south. He went into a store and spoke to a white, married woman named Carolyn Bryant. She then accused him of making physical and verbal advances at her. In response, Bryant’s husband, his brother, and others killed Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy, in a horrific way. They were acquitted.
In 2008, 53 years after Emmett died, Carolyn Bryant said she fabricated the incident. White supremacy allowed this to happen.. A white woman falsely claims that a Black boy besmirched her honor. Her husband is given carte blanche to do whatever he sees fit. White women continue to use their position as “the weaker sex” to force retaliation against Black men (re: Amy Cooper / Christian Cooper). White people must dig into their deep-seated biases and learn to do better. Myself, my family, many of my friends, included.
Some say that Till’s death spurred the next wave in the Civil Rights movement. While wildly important, I am sure some people would have preferred to see his fifteenth birthday.
Excerpt from “A Wreath for Emmett Till” by Marilyn Nelson
III.
Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,
my heartwood has been scarred for fifty years
by what I heard, with hundreds of green ears.
That jackal laughter. Two hundred years I stood
listening to the small struggles to find food…
Two hundred years of deaths I understood.
Then slaughter axed one quiet summer night,
shivering the deep silence of the stars.
A running boy, five men in close pursuit.
One dark, five pale faces in the moonlight.
Noise, silence, back-slaps. One match, five cigars.
Emmett Till’s name still catches in my throat.
XV.
Rosemary for remembrance, Shakespeare wrote.
If I could forget, believe me, I would.
Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,
Emmett Till’s name still catches in my throat.
Mamie’s one child a body thrown to bloat,
Mutilated boy martyr. If I could
Erase the memory of Emmett’s victimhood,
The memory of monsters...That bleak thought
Tears through the patchwork drapery of dreams.
Let me gather spring flowers for a wreath:
Trillium, apple-blossoms, Queen Anne’s lace,
Indian-pipe, bloodroot, white as moonbeams,
Like the full moon which smiled calmly on his death,
Like the gouged eye, which watched boots kick his face.
This next poem, “Black Girl Magic” by Mahogany L. Browne talks about what a Black girl is supposed to do vs. what a Black girl is. White readers, I want to check what our role is in how we and society make Black girls feel about themselves. “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison follows a Black woman named Pecola who equates her melanin with ugliness and strives toward being beautiful--in her eyes White.
Think about the movies we are watching. Does it offer Women of Color in lead roles? With complex backstory? Check the books you’re reading to your children. Do they offer racially diverse characters? Think about the aisles of dolls and the pictures on toy boxes. Are they representing diverse representation? Ask yourself, how can you be a part of the change? How do we teach our children to be actively anti-racist?
Please take a watch: Black Girl Magic
Here is an interview from Poetry Foundation of Mahogany L. Browne discussing her poem and experience.
I wrote this poem at 3:00 a.m. I took my dog out to go to the bathroom and felt the heaviness of the air. From there, metaphors jumped synapse to synapse in my half-asleep brain. With some revision and editing, we are here.
Storm Warning
You know what it feels
like right before a storm?
The air is leaden.
Thick.
I know there is some
scientific answer about
pressure change.
But science can’t answer
what I feel in my
bones--
That the air is hot with
electricity.
It is still and
waiting for a spark.
This country was hot with
electricity.
And, George Floyd’s final breath
sparked
and lit the world on fire.
There is no scientific reason
for this change in pressure.
It has been boiling and rising.
Four hundred years of
oppression and rage vacuumed into
Eight minutes and
forty-six seconds.
It isn’t just about George.
It isn’t just about Ahmaud.
It isn’t just about Breonna.
It isn’t just about _____________.
(say their name)
It is about White men looting Africa taking
husbands, fathers, and brothers.
wives, mothers, and sisters.
It is about four hundred years of lynchings
while the people who were supposed to protect...
...watched.
...cheered.
...participated.
This country has been violently racist
since before it was a country.
It has been raining
hate and
violence and
prejudice
since its conception.
We are fighting the same war,
just a different century.
Police brutality didn’t begin
in the last decade;
we just began filming it.
These protests are not
in response to any one death.
They are in response to
ALL the death
ALL the carnage
we wrecked on our Black brothers and sisters.
By responding with
militarized vehicles and
escalating peaceful marches,
the police continue time and again
to prove that they require
submission
not offer protection.
They are pointing weapons at our citizens.
It doesn’t matter that the
bullets are rubber when
you’re staring down the
barrel of a rifle.
Tear gas and pepper spray are
chemical weapons.
The air is leaden and thick, my friends.
We are the storm.
