Juneteenth is a celebration of African American heritage that is especially relevant in today's climate encouraging us to learn from our past.
Juneteenth honors the emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African Americans in the Confederacy commemorating Union army general Gordon Granger's reading of federal orders in Galveston,Texas, that declared all slaves free.
While rummaging through old assignments, I found a poem that I had written in sixth grade that I believed was especially suited to the Day. My poem is inspired by the book "Chains", a harrowing narrative of a thirteen-year- old slave fighting for her freedom during the American
Revolutionary War.
A Story of Chains
Bodies bound by chains
But not souls
Yet souls can be sold
Defending heart and soul
Seeking freedom from chains
In a war for a freedom meant for another
Released.
Only when fields turned red with blood
Only when a nation torn
Still bound by old conviction
Still chained by the law
Yet they melted...
Marching across water as it burned us
Braved tear gas that choked us
Beatings to break us
Marked by scars
Broken Bodies
Crushing spirits
Yet unbroken
Unbent
Rising like suns rising on a new dawn
To overcome the chains
Yet chains remain
Keep on breaking
Keep on melting
The chains
Till none remain.