Hear Poetry Selections

Story Telling: African and African American original storytelling available upon request

  • Strong in her wants from birth, Mattie called Sister is the baby girl with parents and six others telling her who to be and what to do. When she became African in her dress, hair, and thoughts, well we listened to make sure good sense was talking outta her young mouth.

    Sister made like she was marching with Reverend King and nobody better try stop her.

    People forget that Reverend King’s voice was fed by millions of whispers. Black folks whispering across America, in the cotton fields of southern towns. In the factories of northern cities. In prisons or in public. In shotgun houses, tenement buildings and projects, folks whispered.
    This ain’t right how we treated.

    Reverend King’s voice gave sound to the tongues of our grandfathers and grandmothers silenced by lynching, segregation and the terror of Klu Klux Klan ghost riders. His voice gave sound to our fathers and mothers swallowing down racism and injustice again and again. This was the time when most were shut up or shut down by fear.

    Mattie said she was marching and as her middle sister, I was marching too. The march began like the Mississippi river in flood season, folks spilling out everywhere. Reverend King was far up front with the “hoity-toities” and it was us, the hard working regulars in the middle and the back.

    His voice came in waves. Freedom ran through our veins causing us to march straighter and sing stronger. Then we heard shattering glass. Screams burst as tear gas popped, spreading quickly when Memphis policewaded into the crowd swinging wooden batons, whacking brains and flesh.

    The running began and we were pushed towards the Mississippi river. I thought we surely joining the ancestors at the bottom. Sister grabbed my hand and said we gonna make it. Blood in the streets. Folks limping and holding broken body parts. Paddy wagons stuffed with Black people. We are no longer deaf or mute but loud in remembering these times.

  • Little brown ears heard up close
    The Civil Rights movement
    explained inside our home.

    Mr. Clemons, fired sanitation worker
    shared personal updates on the strike
    connecting 1968 Memphis to 1955 Selma.

    Daddy, career Army sergeant
    ordered away from us to fight for freedom for our country in Viet Nam.

    Mommy, southern homemaker gone into the streets to march for freedom
    for our people in Memphis.

    Little brown mind turning over and over
    to understand
    courageous parents and our country’s rejection.

    Daddy left first
    to a place I could only reach
    with my bedtime prayer, God Bless Daddy.

    Mommy said I could not march along side of her
    it was her time to fight, not yet mine.

    Little brown eyes watched
    soldiers in tanks on Easter morning
    rumble through our neighborhood.

    Fear was heavy in me
    lose Daddy in a faraway war
    lose Mommy in a war up close.

    When the news came that Dr. King was murdered
    Mommy’s screams changed me forever
    I stood as a little brown girl and whispered

    Please Jesus, Let Mommy and Daddy live
    Dr. King is dead

    You could have taken me instead.

  • we come out of Mississippi
    seekin more life, good schoolin
    money to enjoy
    leavin “nig” and sharecroppin behind.

    at first a Memphis city job was real good
    best was the benefits
    what i care i’m a garbage man
    been cleanin after white folks a long time.

    trotted eight hours behind a truck
    white man at the wheel
    better than a mule’s backside
    and the chokin dust from dry fields.

    city money didn’t stop growin shame
    bile in my throat bein called boy
    I AM A Man in 1968
    I wanna drive that garbage truck too.

    we call on Dr. King for help
    with the stalled sanitation strike
    he answered, we marched
    folks were beaten then he was murdered.

    Lawd have mercy
    the price was high
    for poor, Black, mistreated trash men

    to have the equal right to drive a garbage truck.Description text goes here

  • In Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin there is a notation that a Black man, Macaja Revels, born in 1800 on the Cherokee reservation migrated to Dane county and camped at a stream of water eighteen miles north of the village of Madison. Macaja traveled on to buy land elsewhere.

    There is no record of physical description; light, dark or medium what he accomplished or who his parents were. In 1800, a Black man was both an oddity and invisible but the land welcomed him. The land was cheap, fertile with plenty there was schooling for children and protection for escaped slaves so Macaja could rest briefly.

    Who remembers Macaja Revels, Black settler in the 1800’s
    Who camped at a refreshing stream Eighteen miles north of the village of Madison
    but moved on, maybe knowing there would be no welcome in Madison.

    Who remembers that Black people came to Wisconsin to be free?

Poet Fabu Carter

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