Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement

Poem by Jane Stembridge

MRS. HAMER

The
revolutionary
element remained
intact:
they
simply
stood.
She said
"No, sir,
(for emphasis)
we didn't come
for no two
seats"
since
all of us
is tired.

[Mrs Fanny Lou Hamer, from sharecropper on the Sunflower (!) Plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi, to freedom fighter and to the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1964, where the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was eventually offered a token two seats — which they refused. (Sunflower was Jim Eastland's family plantation.)]

THE CHILDREN

than anything

and cotton is
too heavy for

a child
to tote

Take
the chldren
home.

AUTOMATION

THE FLUTE
for Bob

the
fine
thin
flute
the flute
thin
thing
the
thin
thin
thing
which
thinner
than
the
rain
rings
freedom
in

ABOUT JESUS (who walked around a lot and listened carefully)

Jesus walked around a lot
where people
were
and listened
carefully
to everything they said
because
he thought
they had a lot to say
They said
There wasn't any food.
They said
Their kids was sick a lot.
They said
they needed help
and Jesus listened
carefully,
and after he had listened
carefully
he said: if peoples
     got together
     it wouldn't be
     so hard.
He said
that maybe they could
change the world
so children wouldn't starve.
And after
he had finished saying that
he got some food
so they could eat
and then
he walked on down the road
to where
some other peoples lived
and stayed with them
and listened very carefully
again.
That
is what he did.
He told the truth
about the rich
and listened
to the poor.
And then
the people
who ran the country
killed him.
It happens
all the time.

[This poem appeared in the Bulletin of the Young Christian Students, November 1965.]