Armed with only your books and your unbelievably strong determination

You walked

Let’s admit systemic racism still flagrantly flourishes. 

Let’s work to change it. Even if it means some statues of Columbus fall into a lake.

What so proudly we hailed 

to permit it to be taken from you, 

at the twilight’s last gleaming

and occupied by the abolitionist, 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

of the president who couldn’t think very clear,

on the fourth of July, twenty-nineteen:

when rain malfunctioned his teleprompter machine

I didn't yet know hope could just explode,

without a warning sign

Shouting frantic hyperbole over some non-existent attack on the right to bear arms, while what you truly came for was the right to their womb 

Salt was the price for his captured life,

this Congolese man in slave trader hands,

Ota Benga