3/5 of a person?
Property?
Stripped of dignity
No sense of civility
To the brink of insanity
See, the white man wears no placard
to identify himself.
He marches, but he is
separated,
to prove the point that
his species
is not in question
He will never be called
‘boy’ ‘Charlie’
‘nigger’ ‘coon’
‘savage’ ‘monkey’
He will not need to be protected
by the anti-lynching law (there had to be
a law, because lynching was addicting…)
and
Jim Crow doesn’t peck away
at his humanity
We would have our humanity back;
Not that it went away, but the effort
to remove it was prolonged, intense,
and relentless
And even now, still flares
like solar arcs
So yes,
we would take our humanity back,
and whether you like it or not…
We don’t need
your permission.
Beyond Panic 