Poetry.............Slavery was a hard time, not a happy time

by Lerone Bennett

The slave trade was people living, lying, stealing, murdering and dying.

The slave trade was a Black man who stepped out of his hut for a breath of fresh air and ended up, ten months later, in Georgia with bruises on his back and a brand on his chest.

The slave trade was a Black mother suffocating her newborn baby because she didn't want him to grow up a slave.

The slave trade was a kind captain forcing his suicide-minded passengers to eat by breaking their teeth.

The slave trade was a bishop sitting on an ivory chair on a wharf in the Congo and extending his fat hand in wholesale baptism of slaves who were rowed beneath him, going in chains to the slave ships.

The slave trade was a greedy king raiding his own villages to get slaves to buy brandy.

The slave trade was a pious captain holding prayer services twice a day on his slave ship and writing later the famous hymn, 'How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds.'

The slave trade was deserted villages, bleached bones on slave trails and people with no last names.

The slave trade was Caesar Negro, Angelo Negro and Negro Mary.

Poetry............THE BLACK FAMILY PLEDGE

by Maya Angelou

BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors,our children no longer give us honor.

BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors cleared kneeling in perilous undergrowth,our children cannot find their way.

BECAUSE we have banished the God of our ancestors,our children cannot pray.

BECAUSE the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing,our children cannot hear us crying.

BECAUSE we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering,our befuddled children give birth to children they neither want nor understand.

BECAUSE we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our gates, an holds us up to the mirror of the world shouting,"Regard the loveless"

Therefore we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace our lowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our illiterate,to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good things,knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters.

We ARE our brothers and sisters.

IN HONOR of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues,and in gratitude to the same God who brought us out of hopeless desolation, we make this pledge.

Poetry .......DICKMATIZED!!!!

From the Quitestorm
www.myspace.com/dedehuntakaquitestorm
This woman is deep! Check her out............
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJoHq6zujNI