A Queen Named Freedom...

U.S. President Barack Obama presents Cicely Tyson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. Tyson died Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. Image Source: Cicely Tyson paved the way for Black actors to follow footsteps, Jonathan Landrum, Jr., Associated Press, Star Tribune

© January 30, 2021, the Griot Poet

 

Her birth certificate named her Cicely,

Part of the Tyson family,

Close-knit: mother Fredericka, father William, siblings: sister Emily, and brother Melrose, called Beau,

She lived through American apartheid,

Known as “Jim Crow,”

 

Named after a character in a minstrel show,

Meant to ridicule us perpetually,

Demean, and remind us of our pariah status,

Early getting the artistic theater bug,

She patently refused parts that demeaned us,

 

Knowing the power of images,

Images become inner messages,

Repetition of negatives is conjuring,

Of myriad destinies unsuspecting,

The Jedi Mind Trick of social engineering,

Her ministry was her theatrical performances,

Sixty-eight on television, twenty-nine films, fifteen stages, one appearance on radio,

 

If it had been a film,

She would have gotten an Oscar,

For “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman,”

Had it not been on the small screen,

She won an Emmy for Binte in Alex Haley’s Roots for television,

 

Binte was the epitome of Biblical Rachel,

Because her child was no more,

We felt her mother’s pains when she birthed him,

And a mother’s pangs,

Wailing when Kunta Kinte was stolen,

From the Mandinka in Jufere

Or, the dignity portraying sharecroppers during The Great Depression in “Sounder,”

 

Now, Rachel cries for:

 

Emmett Till,

Trayvon Benjamin Martin,

Jordan Davis,

Tamir Rice,

John Crawford III,

Renisha McBride,

Freddy Gray,

Sandra Bland,

Andre Hill,

Ahmaud Arbery,

Breonna Taylor,

George Floyd,

 

A host more since,

Sixteen nineteen,

Eighteen sixty-five,

Or, time immemorial,

 

The facade of white supremacy,

Is held together,

By terror,

Hooded robes,

Red hats,

Tiki torches,

Beaten bodies,

Or, brandishing semiautomatic weapons,

At Michigan state and the US Capitol,

 

Your unflinching portrayal

Of strong, black women,

 

From Binte,

To Ms. Jane Pittman,

Imbuing Ida B. Wells,

Mamie Till,

Coretta Scott King,

Betty Shabazz,

Angela Davis,

Nikki Giovanni,

Sonja Sanchez,

Michelle Obama,

And Kamala Harris,

 

It gave us the overriding confidence,

From our mother:

We can do this,

Straightened our backbones,

Led by our theatrical drum major for justice,

Bring about the world we imagine,

Opposing with all our might the real savages,

Changing from white hoods to tiki torches and red hats,

 

Because our mother,

Cicely,

It helped us birth it into existence,

 

“[She] was sitting there talking to me wearing Manolo Blahnik pumps,” [Gayle] King said. “She was dressed to the T, she was ready, she was sitting in church, she was so proud and so happy, and she was not finished,” King said. “And I asked her, ‘Do you think about death?’ And she said, ‘Of course I think about death. I’ve lost many friends, but I feel like as long as you’re still breathing, you have work to do.’” Raechal Shewfelt, Yahoo News

 

Two days after this interview,

She passed,

Joining the pantheon,

Of Civil Rights icons and activists,

 

The Oscars should apologize for their “honorary” snub,

 

Rest easy, Queen,

We’ll take it from here,

You have done more than enough.