The great victory of the Civil Rights movement was not given to the African American community as a gift, but taken and won as a right by the African American community.
This month as I read the stories from those who overcame and are still overcoming, I was reminded that those who rose up and did justice are growing older. Now is the time to hear the stories they have to tell as they wish to tell them. This is especially true of those not honored in their time, but who did the work from hundreds of churches.
The story of the Civil Rights era is not just the story of a few heroes, but of a community rising up. This is not a story I can tell or should tell. It is a story that must be heard, however, while we can. Poets that knew the era are slipping away. The leaders are aging fast and the young people that overcame are now the elders. There is a greatest generation of heroes and we still have time to listen.
Even saying: “listen” may be too much from me. Mari Evans, who died in 2017, tells a truth that can only be written from the inside, honored by all true Americans, possessed by those whose families they are:
The Elders
With their bad feet
and their gray hair
and Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
cardboard fan
with a colored family seasonal
gift from Baker’s Funeral Home
stirring heat and hallelujahs
No hiding place down here, son
I asked Jesus to change your name, child
help me Jesus
through one more day
And, yesm’am, I don’t mind working late
again and nosir: I’m feeling fine
it be a long time before you need a
young man t’work this job
And swing low sweet chariot Lawd
somewhere there’s a crown f’me
Be our heritage
our strength
The way they moved from can to can’t
preparing the way
throwing down the road
Say want you to have more’n I had child
Say be more than I am, go
Go where there ain’t no limits
See you standing at the top a that mountain
looking down
With their bad feet
and their gray hair
bony symbols of indomitable will
having trumphied over Goree
endured the MIddle Passage
survived cotton and cane
Branding iron and bull whip
crossed Deep River into Canaan
strode through dust bowl and depression.
Smiled through smoking Watts and
Newark, smoldering Detroit and
locked arms with young to sing
surely We Shall Overcome
And now
be saying Walk Together Children
we went through the undergrowth
with only cane knives and we
cut it down to size
Fight the fight, wage the wars
and win
It’s in y’blood
With their bad feet
and their gray hair
they be our heritage
our strength
Torn tents pitched
at the foot of the mountain
having moved from can to can’t
they be our atonal treasure
they be
our priceless charge
———————
Buy the book Continuum (Mari Evans) Just Us Books, 2014.
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