Let There Be Light!

Posted on March 11, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Prison is a place where there is an absence of light.  The little bit of light that exists is generated from and emanates from the people imprisoned there.

The Panopticon

There is a strange architecture around the design of prisons, beginning with the Panopticon, the brainchild of the 18th century theoretical jurist and expounder of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham.  The architectural design of the Panopticon consisted of a rotunda structure, constructed with glass windows, and facing the center.  In this design, every prison cell was occupied by a single individual, and each cell faced the center where the guards were positioned in a tower.  The thinking of the day thought this design “genius,” for a number of reasons, including the psychological pressure on people in prison not knowing when or how they were being observed.  The real beauty though, was that often a light was shone towards the people in cells, practically blinding them, and they could not see the guards in the tower.

As society became just a wee bit more “humane” in how it treated people in prisons, the bright light of the Panopticon was dimmed, thus creating a place where there is an absence of light.

Donna Hylton, in her book, A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and a Life Unbound, demonstrates how light emanates from people who have “reentered” society from prison.

When Donna was in prison, she wrote a letter that made its way to me.  At that time, I was working at a nonprofit organization, coordinating what we called the Family Resource Center (FRC).  The FRC worked with and for people impacted by the criminal legal system.  We ran a popular support group for families with incarcerated loved ones.  We also received letters from almost every prison in New York State.  My staff and I prided ourselves on individual responses to letters.  Often, my staff would flag a letter for me that they thought I should respond to.

In Donna’s letter to the FRC, we learned that she was putting together a “pitch” for executive clemency.  I responded to the letter, giving suggestions on her pitch.  One of the tragedies of long-term imprisonment, is that, perhaps because of the absence of light, people in prison have a hard time “seeing” or even imagining what the world looks like from the other side of prison walls.

When Donna was finally released, she found her way to my office in Brooklyn, asked the people she was meeting if “Eric” was around.  I met Donna, and I saw her light, so it is fitting that the word “light” is in her book.

We should all want a little piece of light in our world, in our lives.  Read this book and get some.

Donna & Eric – 3-15-2022 at The Grace Center in East Harlem
Posted in crime, Education, ezwwaters, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, Life Sentences, Osborne Association, Reentry | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

An American Odyssey

Posted on March 10, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I like a good story, one reason why I like Greek comedies and tragedies, and I fancy myself a storyteller.  So, I’ll tell you a story. . .

Once upon a time (1973), Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York State signed off on a draconian “drug” law that bears his name.  At the time, it was the harshest drug law in the nation, with many states, and the Federal government, following suit.

The Rockefeller Drug Law was like a fast-moving brush fire, devastating urban areas inhabited by Black people and people of color.  There were so many casualties in this War on Drugs, which escalated President Nixon’s War on Crime, declared in 1968 when he was running for the U.S. presidency.  These drug laws, in large part, fueled “mass incarceration” (I only use that term here because people have not yet wrapped their thinking around the accurate term, “hyperincarceration”).

Often, when we think about hyperincarceration, we think of Black and Brown men.  The prison-industrial complex, though, also disproportionately imprisons Black and Brown women.  Black and Brown women are the connective tissue that keeps our families together.  When a woman is locked up, a family is also locked up, and the consequences are different and far more devastating than locking up men.  In fact, the whole family structure is impacted.  Liz Gaynes, the outgoing President of the Osborne Association, where I once worked, for 11 years, once stated that mass incarceration created the largest separation of families since chattel slavery.  This is sad, but true, and not hyperbole. . .

Today, I uplift a woman, Elaine Baretlett, impacted by the criminal legal system.

Elaine’s story, in part, is told in her book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, by Jennifer Gonnerman.  Elaine is just one of many women who have experienced the trauma and the tragedy of imprisonment because of the Rockefeller Drug Law.  As in the classic story told by Homer, The Odyssey, after a war, it is hard to make one’s way home.

During my odyssey I have met many amazing women impacted by the criminal legal system. They are not tragic figures. They are heroines.

Read this American story, which gives you a glimpse inside the tragedy, but also the triumph, of a woman who experienced an odyssey of her own after the Drug War.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Family, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Life Sentences, Mother's Messages, Osborne Association, Politics, race, Reentry, Relationships, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Little Giant Comes to Harlem

Posted on March 9, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Yesterday I uplifted my sister, Jeanette, on International Women’s Day during this Women’s History Month.  Today I uplift three women I work with.

More than 15 years ago I met Dawn Ravella.  She was doing amazing social justice work at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.  At the time, although I was working at a secular nonprofit organization, my work and Dawn’s intersected.  (In fact, since religious thought was instrumental in creating the modern prison [penitentiary] in America, I believe that it is a moral imperative that faith-based groups work hand in hand with community-based organizations addressing various issues within the criminal legal system.)  So interested was Dawn in my work, one day she “shadowed” me when I went to Rikers Island, not as a voyeur or visitor at a zoo, but as a person keenly aware of fundamental injustice and racism in our institutions, most blatantly evident in the criminal legal and punishment system.  This punishment system in particular. . .

Prisons and jails are nothing like people think they are.  Prisons and jails are nothing like they are portrayed on the large and small screens.  And people in prisons and jails are nothing like they are portrayed in print and on TV “news.”

William Eric Waters

The good news though is that people like Dawn are doing amazing work addressing various systems failures, a case on point is Coming Home at Emmaus House-Harlem.  Coming Home is Dawn’s brainchild, her dissertation project at New York Theological Seminary.  Dr. Dawn rolled this “program” out at the Reformed Church of Bronxville, where she stayed for a little more than ten years before relocating Coming Home to Harlem, bringing with her two amazing members of her Leadership Team, Sally Baker, and Theresa Colyar. Sally is a nonprofit leader, consultant, coach, and founder and Executive Director of Girls Inc. Westchester.  Theresa is a psychiatric nurse, community organizer, and Coming Home Facilitator Extraordinaire.

Growing up with three sisters, I like to believe that I have a different and more nuanced understanding of women and power than men who do not have sisters.  I’ve seen amazing displays of power, and empathy, from these women I work with, which makes it a singular honor to be part of this Leadership Team.

As to the title of this post, those who know Dawn know that she barely stands 5’ tall, but she is a giant in many respects.  She hails from Long Island, though I joke that she’s from Lilliput (the Land of Little People in Gulliver’s Travels).  If you know the story, the “little people” subdue the “giant.”

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, race, Reentry, Religion, remorse, Shawshank Redemption, Streets of Rage, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Triumphing Through Levels of Grief

Posted on March 8, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters
My Sisters in White, my Bother, and our Cousin, the Day of our Mother’s Funeral

Today is International Women’s Day.  During Black History Month and these first couple of days in Women’s History Month, I have uplifted women, mostly women authors.  Today, though, I want to uplift a woman near and dear to my heart, the heart of our family, my sister Jeanette.

At 19, when our mother died, Jeanette became the Matriarch of our family, the connective tissue that held us together – at this time, we said, “We only have each other.”  And although our father was alive – he would die almost four years later – and was always there for us, he was an old school Native Southern Son who limited his role to Provider.  We don’t argue about that.  His role didn’t change when our mother died, but Jeanette’s role dramatically changed, including deferring her dreams.

At 19, Jeanette became the “mother” to our younger siblings, my “Irish” twin, Cheryl (17), Wanda (13), and our baby brother Whitney, “not Houston” (10).  Whitney, more than our other siblings, in part because he was the youngest, truly became Jeanette’s child.

I don’t believe that life is a Tragedy, but that there are tragic events in our lives.  Less than a year ago, Whitney passed away, the greatest tragic event in our lives, and twice as tragic for Jeanette, because not only was Whitney her brother, but also her “son.”

Less than a year ago I didn’t know there are levels of grief.  Losing a parent when you are a teenager is a deep and profound form of grief, although parents do not expect to outlive their children, and children do not expect their parents to die.  Still, there’s no preparation, no playbook, for dealing with this grief, not as a teenager, and not as an adult.  On another level of grief, losing a sibling is like losing a body part – one hears those stories of people who have lost a limb “feeling” it (muscle memory?) long after it is gone –  a member of the family.  It cuts even deeper than the loss of a parent.  Losing a sibling, the youngest in your family tree, produces a grief far more profound than losing a parent.  I cried more in the week after our baby brother’s death than I had in my 60 years of life.  (My childhood friends have said they never saw me cry.)  Tears form in my eyes as I write this. . . .

Tears are still forming and falling from Jeanette’s eyes.  There is nothing that can assuage her grief.  Her grief is double our siblings, in that she not only lost a bother, but also a son.

But this post is not about tears.  It is about fortitude and strength in the face of tragedy.

My sister, Jeanette, is the strongest woman I know, and if there is life after death, then I hope that she and Whitney are reunited.

Posted in being a teenager, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers, Growing Up, juveniles, Lest We Forget, Mother's Messages, raising black boys, Relationships, Religion, Urban Impact | Tagged | Leave a comment

The “new” Jim Crow is as old as the Union

Posted on March 7, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Ever have a “Eureka!” moment?  During my legal research in the early 1980’s, I came across something that, beyond a reasonable doubt, confirmed what people had been talking about without much evidence, beyond the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to wit: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (emphasis added).  (See the chart below, “A Comparison of New York State Laws and Regulations and Slave Codes.”)

Call the Thirteenth Amendment the Exception to the Emancipation Proclamation Clause.  Herein lies the origins of hyperincarceration, not “mass incarceration,” because people formerly enslaved (Africans and their descendants) were the targets of this “Constitutional” Amendment.

Even before the “end” of “legal slavery,” in the 1820’s, Black people in America were disproportionately imprisoned.  Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville – the very same De Tocqueville who is famous for Democracy in America – came to America to study her penitentiary system.  They found the disproportionate imprisonment of “Negros” in the Southern states.  Their findings were documented in On the PENITENTIARY SYSTEM in the UNITED STATES and its APPLICATION to FRANCE (1833).  Even before the Thirteen Amendment, when the peculiar institution was a powerful source of social control and punishment of Black people, white Southerners still found use for the penitentiary, which provided absolutely no penance for those in it.

One hundred and seventy-seven years later, Michelle Alexander picks up this thread from De Beaumont and De Tocqueville, in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  One could argue that this book is the most important book in the last 50 years about the criminal legal system and its byproduct: “mass incarceration” (read hyperincarceration).

Alexander puts this age-old American problem in a context people seem to readily understand, that is, legal segregation, also known as Jim Crow.  There is no official “end” date for segregation in America.  Even legally speaking, it’s hard to argue that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 ended legal segregation. When the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, 14 years after the Brown decision, he was fighting this protracted Civil Rights War against both legal (de jure) and de facto segregation.  In the 1980’s, a Harvard University study found that New York City had one of the most segregated public school systems in the United States.  Nonetheless, The New Jim Crow got masses of people to look at the criminal legal system in ways it had never been looked, through a lens that provided some clarity.

I would like to think that it’s clear that “mass incarceration” is not the new Jim Crow, but slavery reimagined, with bars.

A Comparison of New York State Laws and Regulations and Slave Codes

New York State Laws and RegulationsSlave Codes*
Correction Law ⸹170(1).  Contracts prohibited.  The commissioner of correction shall not, nor shall any other authority whatsoever, make any contract by which the labor or time of any prisoner in any state prison, reformatory, penitentiary of jail in this state, or the product or profit of his work, shall be contracted, let, farmed out, given or sold to any person, firm, association or corporation; except that the convicts in said penal institutions may work for, and the products of their labor may be disposed of to, the state or any political division thereof or for or to any public institution owned or managed and controlled by the state or an political division thereof.Art. 174.  The slave is incapable of making any kind of contract, except those which relate to his own emancipation.  (LA)   Art. I, ⸹1005.  No master, overseer, or other person having the charge of a slave, must permit such slave to hire himself to another person, or to hire his own time, or to go at large, unless in a corporate town, by consent of the authorities thereof, evidenced by an ordinance of the corporation.  (AL)   XXXIII.  [N]o owner, master or mistress of any slave…shall permit or suffer any of his, her or their slaves to go and work out of their respective houses or families, without a ticket in writing under pain of forfeiting the sum of current money, for every such offence.  (SC)
  
Civil Rights Law ⸹79(1).  Forfeiture of office and suspension of civil rights.  Except as provided in subdivision two a sentence of imprisonment in a state correctional institution for any term less than for life or a sentence of imprisonment in a state correctional institution for an indeterminate term, having a minimum of one day and a maximum of natural life, forfeits all the public offices, and suspends, during the term of the sentence, all the civil rights, and all private trusts, authority, or powers of, or held by, the person sentenced.Art. 177.  The slave is in capable of exercising any public office or private trust.  (LA)
  
Department of Correctional Services Directive #4201.  The inmate shall write to the Superintendent expressing an intent to marry.Art. 182.  Slaves cannot marry without the consent of their masters, and their marriages do not produce any of the civil effects which result from such contract.  (LA)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.10.  Inmates shall not conspire or take any action which is intended to or results in the takeover of any area of the facility, or, acting in a group, engage in any violent conduct involving threat of violence.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.11.  Inmates shall not engage in any violent conduct or conduct involving the threat of violence.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.12.  Inmates shall not lead, organize, participate, or urge other inmates to participate in work-stoppages, sit-ins, lock-ins, or other action which may be detrimental to the order of the facility.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 104.13.  Inmates shall not engage in conduct which disturbs the order of the facility.Art. I, ⸹1015.  Riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses, and seditious speeches by a slave, are punished, by the direction of any justice before whom he may be carried.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 105.10.  Unauthorized Assembly or Activity.  The unauthorized assembly of inmates in groups is prohibited.  The size of the group is determined by local policy (generally five people).Art. I, ⸹1020.  Not more than five male slaves shall assemble together at any place off the plantation, or place to which they belong, with or without passes or permits to be there, unless attended by the master or overseer of such slave, or unless such slaves are attending the public worship of God, held by white persons.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 105.11.  Religious services, speeches or addresses by inmates other than those approved by the Superintendent or designee are prohibited.Art. I, ⸹1022.  Any slave who preaches, exhorts, or harangues any assembly of slaves, or of slaves and free persons of color, without a license to preach or exhort from some religious society of the neighborhood, and in the presence of five slave-holders, must – be punished.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 109.13.  Inmates who are on outside work assignments such as community service projects, or outside ground details shall not leave their assigned area.Art. I, ⸹1008.  No slave must go beyond the limits of the plantation on which he resides, without a pass, or some letter or token from his master or overseer, giving him authority to go and return from a certain place.  (AL)
  
Standards of Inmate Behavior, 113.10.  Inmates shall not make, possess, sell or exchange any item or contraband that may be classified as a weapon by description, use or appearance.   Standards of Inmate Behavior, 113.18.  Inmates shall not be in possession of tools without authorization.Art. I, ⸹1012.  No slave can keep or carry a gun, powder, shot, club or other weapon, except the tools given him to work with, unless ordered by his master or overseer to carry such weapon from one place to another.  (AL)

_________________________

*The Slave Codes are followed by their states’ abbreviation.  The Louisiana Slave Code of 1824; the Alabama Slave Code of 1852; and the South Carolina Slave Code of 1740.

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Martin Luther King, Politics, Slavery | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spirit-Busting Patriarchy

Posted on March 6, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Have you ever read the translation of an author’s work and had a strong desire to read it in the original?  One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, for me, was that book.  During a three-year period I read the book three times, listened to audio tapes in Spanish, and intensely studied the language, building on the years I learned basic Spanish in intermediate school and high school, for the sole purpose of reading this great book in the original language it was written.  In fact, when I was courting my wife, whose first language is Spanish, I gave her a copy of Cien años de soledad to read, since it’s my favorite book by a Latin American author.  With my understanding of the book (through three readings), I was able to read, follow, and appreciate the story in Spanish.  One may wonder why I am mentioning a male author in Women’s History Month.

I am mentioning Gabriel García Márquez today for two reasons: one, today, March 6th, is the anniversary of Márquez’ death; and two, the mere mention of his name in a New York Times book review, introduced me to this writer, Isabel Allende.

In the Times book review of her first book, The House of the Spirits (1982), there was a reference to Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude.  If an author is mentioned in the same sentence as Márquez, then I am going to read her.  So, my book recommendation today is Allende’s The House of the Spirits.  If the surname sounds familiar, her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.

Isabel Allende is a great woman writer to uplift this Women’s History Month, in that, “Her history of oppression [as a woman] and liberation is thematically found in much of her fiction, where women contest the ideals of patriarch leaders.”

Having been mentioned in the same breath as Gabriel García Márquez, considered the most influential writer in Spanish since Cervantes, Isabel Allende has been called “the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author.”

During Black History Month, I mentioned a couple of Black women writers, storytellers in the tradition of Scheherazade.  Allende is also among that group of great storytellers.

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A Statue for the Unknown Slave Woman?

Posted on March 5, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Today, in honor of Women’s History Month, I’m going to do something slightly different: honor an unknown woman — in fact, unknown women — by sharing a poem from my third collection of poetry, The Black Feminine Mystique. It is entitled, “A Statue for the Unknown Slave Woman?”

Her broad hips had launched a thousand slave ships.

On the transatlantic “trip” her fate was sealed;

She was repeatedly raped, bore slaves for an alien race.

On the auction block she stood protuberantly pregnant,

While White men gathered around her, rubbed her belly,

And then fiercely bid to own her fertile body.

America harbors the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island,

A torch upraised in one of her hands, lighting the way,

For the tired, poor, huddled White masses yearning to be free.

Perhaps off the coast of the Carolinas, on Sullivan Island,

America should erect a statue, call it Lady Slavery,

For the stolen, shackled Black masses also yearning to be free.

Untold wealth had issued from Lady Slavery’s womb.

Why not a statue for this unknown woman, or a tomb?

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Ida B. Wells: The Black Woman Crusader Against White Knights

Posted on March 4, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery on July 16, 1862.  She was “freed” by presidential proclamation and executive order (the Emancipation Proclamation) issued by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, during the American Civil War.

Ida B. Wells became a journalist, and her most famous writing is in her pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law and All Its Phases.  Wells was the first person to extensively document lynchings, and dispelled the myth that lynchings were reserved for Black “criminals.”  Wells exposed lynching as a practice of white men, often inspired by the siren song of white women, to intimidate and oppress Black Americans who created economic and political competition for whites.  Think the destruction of the Black Wall Street in 1923, and the mass murder of its Black residents.

Wells’ work is noteworthy for its real-time reporting on the “incendiary propaganda about Black rape that was used to justify the practice” of lynching.

If the Black Church had saints, then Ida B. Wells would be part of that celestial lineup.

In my collection of poetry, The Black Feminine Mystique, there is a poem, one of my Almost Sonnets, dedicated to Ida B. Wels, entitled “Strange Fruit.”

She waged a just war against White knights,

This patron saint of the anti‑lynching crusade.

She wielded her pen like a crusader her sword,

Exposed emasculators who’d reduced Black men

To icons to be destroyed.

Self-proclaimed Christians hell‑bent on destroying this African Priapus,

This ancient Black God who made them feel inadequate.

They castrated him and crucified him on a tree,

Commemorated this day as The Day of the Rope.

She was Isis reincarnated, the devoted sister‑wife‑mother.

She attacked with the relentlessness of a warrior‑goddess,

Revealed that mostly innocent Black men

Were victims of this strange justice.

If slavery is America’s original sin,

Then America’s Eve falsely accused the snake of seduction.

She told this story again and again, until the myth had become a reality

In the popular White imagination.

This Women’s History Month, all women, but especially white women, should read Ida B. Wells’ Southern Horrors: Lynch Law and all its Phases.

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Poetry, Politics, race, raising black boys, Religion, Slavery | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

We Be Watchin’ You God!

Posted on March 3, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Their Eyes Were Watching God!  That is one of the greatest and most meaningful titles to come out of the Harlem Renaissance.  And Zora Neale Hurston was one of the coolest women during that era, holding her own with all the male Harlem luminaries, shining as brightly.

Yeah, God, we be watchin’ you, thru 246 years of slavery, thru 72 years of sharecropping ‘n’ segregation, but we still faithful, e’en when white folk curse us, call us sons ‘n’ daughters of Ham, Uncle Toms, Toby, ‘n’ Aunt Jemimas!

Readers might find the vernacular hard to follow, but no harder than Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Hurston had a better handle on the vernacular of Black people in the South than Harriet Beecher Stowe.  In fact, I made it through Their Eyes Were Watching God easier than Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  If the vernacular is difficult to follow – actually, it’s like a foreign language, maybe developed by Black folk in order to communicate with each other without having massa and missus any wiser – then listen to the audio book, superbly performed by Ruby Dee.

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“My Lord, What a Morning”

Posted on March 2, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

On the penultimate day of Black History Month, I participated in a Black History Month Celebration at my church, St. Michael-St. Malachy.  I was asked to recite a poem.  A number of youth were present at the celebration, and even though poetry should not be explained, but experienced, I provided a little context for the following poem, dedicated to Marian Anderson, the great Black Opera Singer.

If timing is everything, I chose this poem over something from my first book, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present, simply because I thought it would resonate more with the audience.  It just so happened that Marian Anderson was born on this day, February 27th, in 1897.

I confess that I’m not a lover of opera, but I have listened to it.  My High School Music Teacher at Alexander Hamilton High School, now Paul Robeson High School, Mr. R., a Black male, introduced us to opera.  He said, even if we didn’t like it, we would have had at least experienced it.  He would mix it up though, give us some James Brown and Beethoven, Marvin Gaye and Mozart, Sarah Vaughan and Vivaldi.  At 14 years of age, I had already watched Porgy and Bess, my only claim to having experienced an Opera.

My Lord, What a Morning, is a “Negro Spiritual.”  Sometimes Anderson is credited with writing it, but she wasn’t the writer, but a great interpreter of it, and of  the Spirituals.  This song though must’ve had great significance for Anderson because it’s the title of her autobiography.

I briefly told the audience a little Marian Anderson history, that she was famous in Europe before her 1935 debut in the States.  She was a contralto.  She had a three-octave range.  The famous conductor, Arturo Toscanini, said that Marian had “a voice one hears once in a hundred years.”

The racism of some Americans didn’t want to hear Marian’s voice.  In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.  The First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who was a member of the DAR, resigned from it, something that endeared me to FDR’s wife.  Instead of singing at Constitution Hall, on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the Lincoln Memorial steps, Marian sang before an integrated audience (which included the President and First Lady, who made this event happen) of more than 75,000 people, and a radio audience in the millions.

So, it is only appropriate that this poem bears the same name as the spiritual and Anderson’s autobiography

My Lord, What a Morning

I am Black and proud,

O Daughters of the American Revolution,

Like the soil of Creation,

Like the land of Mother Africa.

Do not look at me with contempt because I am Black.

Your mythology says I am sun‑burnt,

That my forefathers were cursed.

My forebears sold my ancestors into slavery,

Made generations toilers of the land;

But the land I made great rejected me

When I came up from slavery.

You found other ways to keep me down,

Would not allow me to sing my song

In this land that is mine as well as yours.

My forefathers fought in the American Revolution,

My foremothers supported the Civil War,

My father fought to make the world safe for democracy,

My brother would fight to end all wars.

How dare you not allow me to sing my song!

I will lift my voice and sing,

I will sing a song of sweet liberty,

I will sing so loud the earth will be torn asunder,

I will sing so loud those war dead will rise.

Listen, and hear the angels weep,

Listen, the temple’s curtains have been rent,

Listen, and know that God speaks through me.

Hear my voice, O Daughters of the American Revolution,

Hear my voice and eat your hearts out!

— The Black Feminine Mystique

Posted in Black patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Poetry, race, Religion, Slavery | Leave a comment