Believe It

You just can’t
believe it?
Another unarmed 
Black person
shot down by police
even before the latest 
trial of the century 
exonerates the last
killer in blue?
Look back and
believe it.
In 1619
the White Lion
sailed into Virginia 
bearing this new land’s
first burden
of Black sorrow.
It beat the Mayflower 
by a year
but there was
no thanksgiving.
Almost 250 years passed,
a plantation economy,
King Cotton,
a plantation ethos,
yassa massa, nosaa massa,
was built
upon their backs,
a war was begun 
to preserve it
before they  
were freed.
Their liberator died
for his trouble,
as they moved
from slave to sharecropper,
a new word
for much the same.
Years passed,
resentment
at their freedom 
bubbled,
a vile stew
spilling over—
terror in the night
by men
in white sheets,
hanging by the neck
from sturdy tree limbs
until dead,
vanishing from the Earth
in the dark of night—
this keeping them 
in their place
was exhausting for those 
who sought to keep 
their own place,
but it was done.
Whether unknown—
Emmett Till—
or grand—
Martin Luther King, Jr.—
they were kept 
in their place
as they still are today—
Trayvon Martin
Eric Garner
Michael Brown
Tamir Rice
Botham Jean
Breonna Taylor 
George Floyd
Daunte Wright
Charleston church parishioners—
too many to recall.
You don’t want 
to think about it,
you don’t want 
to believe it?
Well, it’s true,
it’s history,
our black
Black history,
it could be
our Black future,
so think about it,
so don’t be surprised,
just believe it.

Thanks, Patty, for your poem that gave birth to this one.