Bomb Threats...

Howard University campus in Washington DC. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP, Gloria Oladipo, The Guardian

 © February 1, 2022, the Griot Poet

 

Sheila P. Moses prosed

“So They Burned the Black Churches,”

The cowards were Zoom bombing with porn in Bible studies,

Before the 2020 election,

 

How did THAT work?

News flash: Like Jimmy Kimmel said,

"Fatty Labelle" lost.

 

The Greensboro Four:

 

David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. (Jibreel Khazan), Joe McNeil

Several Bennett Bells,

And Dudley High School students

 

Staged the first popular sit-in

At the F.W. Woolworth counter,

February 1, 1960,

These young people endured,

Cursing,

Cigarette burns,

Spilled food and drinks,

Spittle,

 

Four years from that, we got the Civil Rights Act,

Five years from that, we got the Voting Rights Act,

Eight years from that, we got the Fair Housing Act,

 

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things NOT seen,” Hebrews 11:1

 

Young African Americans

Arrested,

Beaten,

Bitten,

Hosed in the streets,

Trying to enact the philosophies of Henry Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King,

The antithesis was Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Huey P. Newton,

The synthesis is to let freedom ring,

 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL men are created equal,”

 

ALL: a predeterminer refers to the whole quantity or extent of a particular group or thing.

 

To tell us we are NOT a part of all:

You better have a damn good, logical argument WHY we’re not human!

 

Alcorn State University

Coppin State University,

Edward Waters University,

Fort Valley University,

Howard University,

Jackson State University,

Kentucky State University,

Mississippi Valley State University,

Morgan State University,

Spelman College,

Rust College,

University of the District of Columbia,

Xavier University,

 

All recipients of bomb threats,

Disrupting classes,

On the FIRST day of Black History Month,

A relatively safe space

Where we train our future leaders,

In their majors, true history, and activism.

 

Historically Black Colleges and Universities exist,

Because Primarily White Institutions didn’t want them,

The same reason black churches, black sororities and fraternities, and Order of the Eastern Star, and Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons exist,

 

Because the truth and the human spirit cannot be diminished,

 

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

 

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo, and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

 

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

 

Langston Hughes told us this,

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,”

He, too, was born on February One,

 

We know our place is to be in the sun,

 

We have sacrificed for this country since Crispus Attucks,

We have fought for rights that were never extended to us,

Since the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the First World War, the Second World War, The Korean War, the Vietnam War, Grenada, Honduras, the Gulf War, the War on Terror, Afghanistan, Iraq,

And not ONE bone spur!

 

“So They Burned the Black Churches,”

You Zoom bombed Bible studies during a pandemic,

You’ve been in a panic since Deion Sanders scored the NCAA first-round draft pick,

At Jackson State (I noticed it was on the list),

Now, your genius move is to threaten the places where our leaders are trained?

 

Your pedigreed PWIs got their start with slave money,

Our HBCUs were started on faith, in the basement of churches,

You know, the ones you tried to firebomb and burn?

 

The March for Civil Rights began

With our ancestors, aunties, uncles, and grandparents,

We have heroes now that “didn’t appear on any stamps,”

Your cowardly moves are what Public Enemy prophesied:

“Fear of a Black Planet.”

The baton was passed to us,

To see the vision come to pass.

 

“So They Burned the Black Churches,”

You Zoom bombed Bible studies during a pandemic,

And, you think some bomb threats on February One are going to stop us?

 

Are you just that thick?