Poetic Therapy (a series) #2 - Confessed hurt

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Poetry allows me to stand up for causes and use words as a part of my activism. The racial disparity established by slavery and experienced by Blacks in America is a continued reality lived by Blacks today. The Civil War brought with it a failed Reconstruction (Manevitz 2020) and it increased America’s prison population by turning plantations to penitentiaries (Time 2018). Jim Crow perpetuated segregation (History.com) and since there is no equality in separatism, activists marched for Civil Rights. Civil Rights birthed integration and with that brought inclusivity and diversity. My acrostic interpretation of the trauma associated with integration is inspired by Ballard of Birmingham (Randall). Randall’s poem focuses on the bombing of a church. The inspiration I draw from Ballard of Birmingham centers on the horrific terrorism Blacks continue to receive as citizens of this country.

For Elizabeth Eckford, 1957 – an acrostic

Trembling with fear, she walks the walled crowd

Heaviness rising with each step; it falling with each breath

Each voice screaming it, covering her like a shroud

Young, old, male, and female wishing upon her death

Colored she is in a sea of ghostly faces

Arkansas’s 1957 heat continued to anger the multitude

Little Rock, another city not looking to integrate races

Landmark legislation upheld, un-whiting the school ensued

Here she comes, covered in white, one of 9 in line

Eisenhower calling on the Guard to protect brown citizens

Routing her plus 8 away from the racist land mine

Navigating, she did, through school halls of discrimination

Inequality standing in her way with its desire to oppress

Grinding, she continued, against Jim Crow’s constant limitation

Graduating, she celebrates, past the slurs and the distress

Enrolled, unbeknownst to her, as a change maker for this nation

Rebelling, in 1957, against supremacy’s white abscess

As a military dependent growing up in the U.S. Marine Corps and as a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, I have been in environments where my melanin was used to discriminate against me. I have lived in various U.S. states and in a number of foreign countries. I have been called derogatory names as a child, as a service member, and as a veteran. One of the names I have been called is included in the left margin of the poem. Although I have never met Elizabeth Eckford, both of us have joint experiences as Black females living in environments that didn’t and still doesn't want to include us. I still feel the anger my 13-year-old self exuded as I ran down a Bowling Green, Kentucky road after a bunch of teenagers hurdled the n-word out of a red Ford pick-up truck. I still remember the disgusted expression planted on my face as a First Sergeant explained to me the towns that were “blacklisted” for military member in the panhandle of Florida. These cities were blacklisted because of their treatment of Black citizens. Military members were advised to not even travel through these towns. Anger showed up again in 2017 in a Wells Fargo parking lot in central Georgia. A man in a tan colored car, accompanied by a woman, yelled out of the window the n-word. The word came out of the man's mouth at the same slow speed the man used to back out of the parking stall next to me. Although societal integration could be seen by some as a necessary requirement for Black advancement in America, it was and is a traumatic experience. Poetry confesses hurt.

• Manevitz, Alex. “Perspective | the Failures of Reconstruction Have Never Been More Evident — or Relevant — than Today.” Washington Post, 11 June 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/11/failures-reconstruction-have-never-been-more-evident-or-relevant-than-today/.

• Bauer, Shane. “The True History of America’s Private Prison Industry.” Time, 25 Sept. 2018, www.time.com/5405158/the-true-history-of-americas-private-prison-industry/.

• Randall, Dudley. "Ballad of Birmingham." Cities Burning. Broadside Press, 1968. www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/46562/ballard-of-birmingham.