“In 1938,” according to the online civil rights organization, Color of Change, “civil rights activist and poet Langston Hughes wrote his chilling poem ‘Kids Who Die‘ which illuminates the horrors of lynching during the Jim Crow era.” Hughes presciently foresaw a civil rights movement, later carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, that would counter racial segregation and hatred with interracial solidarity and love.
Listen, kids who die —
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come —
You are sure yourselves that it is coming —
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky —
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come —
You are sure yourselves that it is coming —
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky —
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
This Danny Glover narrated, Frank Chi and Terrance Green video demonstrates the ongoing relevance of “Kids Who Die” and underscores why the #BlackLivesMatter movement must be a critical component of a just and equitable future. Please take less than three minutes to watch it…
Yesterday I read “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. An absolute must-read book.