{"id":405280,"date":"2024-02-15T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=405280"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Black-History-Month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Black-History-Month\/","title":{"rendered":"Black History Month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lucille Clifton, born 1936 – died 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHer leadership during her years as chancellor of the American Academy of Poets and her position as Maryland\u2019s Poet Laureate contributed to her role as one of the 20th Century\u2019s premiere poets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014from Study.com<\/p>\n

In last week\u2019s poem Gwendolyn Brooks wrote of the mother of her slain son with the subtitle in parentheses (after the murder, after the death). She allowed photographs of her slain son in his coffin to be taken so the world could see what had been done to him.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s poem, Lucille Clifton speaks in the voice of the slain man, James Byrd Jr. in 1998. When his murderers did not succeed in lynching\/hanging him, they dragged his body on a rope down the road in their car, pulling Byrd behind them.<\/p>\n

The poem captures the gruesome horror of Byrd\u2019s death. The punctuation and capitalization is Lucille Clifton\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cjasper texas 1998\u201d<\/h3>\n

for j. byrd<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\u201ci am a man\u2019s head hunched in the road.<\/p>\n

i was chosen to speak by the members of my body.<\/p>\n

the arm as it pulled away pointed toward me,<\/p>\n

the hand opened once and was gone<\/p>\n

why and why and why<\/p>\n

should I call a white man brother<\/p>\n

who is the human in this place,<\/p>\n

the thing that is dragged or the dragger?<\/p>\n

what does my daughter say?<\/p>\n

the sun is a blister overhead.<\/p>\n

if it were alive I could not bear it.<\/p>\n

the townsfolk sing we shall over come<\/p>\n

while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth<\/p>\n

into the dirt that covers us all.<\/p>\n

i am done with the dust. i am done.\u201d<\/p>\n


Black History Month<\/p>\n

Joey aka “Pepe Batbon” Connolly is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is the Poet Laureate of Tinian and enjoys stargazing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lucille Clifton, born 1936 – died 2010 \u201cHer leadership during her years as chancellor of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}