© May 29, 2021, the Griot Poet
At the corner of Greenwood, Archer, and Pine,
Made famous for its existence,
By the GAP Band in the eighties,
The descendants of slaves took advantage of toxic segregation,
Creating
Businesses, churches, schools, museums, theaters,
An interdependent infrastructure
In Tulsa, Oklahoma
That came to be known as
Black Wall Street,
The New York one,
Originally a slave auction block,
Karmically fell eight years later,
To greed, and amok stock trading,
Causing the karmic Great Depression,
Causing many to dive to their deaths off,
The Empire State Building,
But in 1921,
All it took was an accusation of rape,
Of a so-called white woman
On an elevator:
It never happened,
She didn’t exist,
But mobs don’t like facts,
Just an excellent made-up story,
To whip them into action,
Klansmen
Began looting businesses,
Burning churches,
Shooting residents,
Be they men, women, or children,
Because mobs aren’t selective,
Imitating their “heroes.”
In the silent film “Birth of a Nation,”
Who President Woodrow Wilson
Said on its viewing at the Executive residence in 1911
Was “history written with lightning,”
That quote likely,
The inspiration for turpentine bombs
Dropped from planes,
Razing the project of self-sufficiency
In a hellish blaze,
The dead piled high like logs in massive,
Unmarked graves,
Replicated during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,
Official records burned,
Or stolen from libraries,
It’s not surprising,
Wanton criminals, nor their descendants
Want to be reminded,
Of the recompense they still owe,
One hundred years hence,
The three living survivors:
Viola Fletcher, 107, her younger brother Hughes Van Ellis,
100, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106,
Are our modern “drum majors for justice”
Viola lives with the massacre every day,
A century of PTSD,
In fragile health,
She wants to see justice,
For her and her descendants,
While she and the survivors are still on the planet,
The progeny of arsonists,
Still hold the levers of power and wealth,
One hundred years hence,
Rosewood in Sanford, Florida,
Home of Trayvon Benjamin Martin,
Fell two years later, in 1923,
To an accusation of (wait for it) rape of a white woman,
Before that, in 1919,
The Alabama Coronavirus pandemic,
We now know as H1N1,
Because American troops trained there,
Farms and animal waste not far from them,
Erroneously named the Spanish Flu,
Because Spain was the only nation correlating,
Troop movements to the spread of pathogens,
In 1919,
The “Red Summer” inaugurated,
In black townships across the nation,
(Mob violence during a pandemic: imagine that?)
As American soldiers came home,
From defending the nation in WWI,
Many African American soldiers lynched for the “affront” of
wearing their uniforms,
That they wore in theater defending the nation,
Violence because the more skilled veterans
Were in honest competition,
For factory and agricultural jobs,
That the vets on merit were winning,
The right’s resistance to reparations is simple:
People like “Moscow Mitch”
Who’s Kentucky home family built its wealth on slave labor,
Would ultimately have to foot the Bill,
They barely keep a straight face,
When they tell us to
“Lift ourselves by our bootstraps,”
When they know their ancestors stole them,
Or burned Wakanda* to ashes,
Stole its Vibranium* riches,
Michael B. Jordan’s as Erik Kilmonger*,
Made a villain have a point, and sympathetic,
And it’s not just personal wealth,
As to why they oppose reparations,
To the descendants and last three surviving witnesses,
Of a domestic white terrorist massacre:
Like the thread of a quilt,
One stray strand
Can unravel
The 400-year tapestry,
Of white supremacy,
Dismantling income inequality,
It’s why the right is terrified,
Of a Star Trek “post-scarcity” economy:
Without wanton theft and murder,
What would the so-called self-made “wealthy” have left?
May 31, 1921, the Memorial Day Black Wall Street Massacre.
This piece I dedicate to the survivors and descendants of
Black Wall Street: reparations NOW!
*Characters, places, and objects created in “Black Panther ™,”
a Marvel Studios product by Jack Kilby and Stan Lee.
