Death In Yorkville
(Jamas Powell, Summer, 1964)
How many bullets does it take
To kill a fifteen-year-old kid?
How many bullets does it take
To kill me?
How many centuries does it take
To bind my mind-chain my feet-
Rope my neck-lynch me-
Unfree?
From the slave chain to the lynch rope
To the bullets of Yorkville,
Jamestown, 1619 to 1963:
Emancipation Centennial-
100 years NOT free.
Civil War Centennnial: 1965.
How many Centennials does it take
To kill me,
Still alive?
When the long hot summers come
Death ain't
No jive.
~Langston Hughes, The Panther and the Lash
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