Guarded by the monuments honoring the defenders from the northern aggression
A town square, now sits quiet
Bypassed
The highway leads to the WalMart suburbs, spaces filled with fast food and fast fun, a drive through espresso and a MySpace page
The rhythms of cicadas, drowned by the roar of air conditioners
In the shade of live oaks, by the County Courthouse, I sit with my father and uncle
They speak of my grandfather – Eph – Manager of the cotton gin in Thorndale, Texas
With their voices the past comes alive:
The wagons creaking under their load
Bales of cotton
Products of hours of picking under a hot sun
Sweat streaming
Backs bent with pain
Bloody hands
Callused hands scarred by the thorns of the south’s cash crop
White hands and black hands made equal
By the pain and the heat
Sunlight streams through the cracks
Revealing cotton dust rising
Filling the spaces between breaths
The cotton enters the gin
Separating fibers from seeds
Long white fibers
To form the clothes on our backs
Dark seeds pressed
Oil for margarine, meal to feed cattle
They say the cotton gin killed Eph
Years of dust caused the cancer in his brain
A working man
A hard man
No time for tenderness
Love meant food on the table and a roof over their heads
My father’s sense of duty and responsibility flow from him
Father buried Eph in Taylor – as he asked — with a good view of the road to Thorndale
Later that evening, we watch a little league game, April brings the nation’s pastime
A hot wind blows across the field
A reminder of the scorching Texas day
Grasshoppers by the hundreds fly towards the electric lights.
A black child walks by
Interrupting the serenity of our colorless existence
Watch him, a stranger says, he may have a knife
Shaken, I am horrified: the cotton gin cranks on, separating the light from the dark
Suburban streets cannot mask
Centuries of hurt, neglect and segregation
Revisiting our country’s Civil War, April resonates: Sumter, Appomattox, Lincoln’s Assassination
Bypass not these one-hundred and fifty years
Bypass not these struggles for justice
Mold not history to political need
Pick not the path of easy memory and least resistance
Sift the evidence, seek the truths
For we hold these truths to be self-evident
That “all” are created equal
Long before his death in Memphis in April 1968
Dr. King dreamed on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:
“…..we will be able to transform the jangly discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brother hood.”
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