Best Bethune Poems
Land of the free
Home of the slaves
The blood, sweat and tears of my ancestors resonate
Amongst the soil where they were slain
I’m hearing their struggle
I’m feeling their pain
I can’t imagine being forced to part from my family
All for massa’s gain
So I pay homage to those who promoted change
People like every slave who tried to escape
Nat Turner, Ms Carlotta, Harriet Tubman
And the safe houses who were in accord
And peg leg Joe with his song
Follow the drinking gourd.
People like, the disregarded - those thrown overboard
And who was dismissed and defamed
The ones who were stripped of their soul, their pride, their names
The list could go on
The full will never be told
So I pay homage to others who were bold
Like John Brown, The Freedom Riders, Sojourner Truth
Ida B Wells, Phyllis Wheatley, Maya Angelou,
Langston Hughes and Charles Drew
George Washington Carver, Ruby Bridges
Booker T Washington and Mary McCleod Bethune
Charles Houston, Ralph Bunche, Fredrick Douglass
WEB Dubois, Paul Robeson, Ralph Abernathy
Benjamin Banneker, Marcus Garvey and Crispus Attucks
Who’s death by the way
Symbolized the American lie
You cant declare the rights of all men
While the people of African decent rights get denied
But still we rise
Thanks to Dr Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,
The Black Panthers, the Buffalo Soldiers and Tuskegee Airmen
None who were showed any love
Yeah it’s an uphill battle,
But obviously greatness can be done.
We can rise above this stigma
That blacks are lazy and daunting
That our worth is null and void
And in essence minus nothing
And of all the names mentioned
And the greatness of their successes
No one has been able to erase the evil transgressions of a racist mind
And once you have experienced just a taste of it
It changes your perception of time
The oppression beats like the drum on the chariot
Of when it was finally time to escape to freedom
It's mine
After her husband’s death,
The Countess Antoinette de
Bethune Palogne,
lived twenty-five years alone.
Each day to show her faithfulness,
She did the oddest deed.
To her husbands skull kept on her desk,
From his favorite two books she would read.
© Apr 2010