Our Unnamed Warriors

How many had to be lost
How many at what cost
What's The cost of a better life
For my children and my wife

How much blood had to be shed
How many fathers pronounced dead
Before the world would see
The horror that surrounded you and me

They blamed our warriors for a great sin
Because they could not control the color of their skin
Our soldiers were burned their faces charred 
And our women were forever getting scared

Hanging like ornaments from a tree
They were a reminder for all to see 

The unnamed warriors who fell at an alarming rate
Had unveiled society's wrath of injustice and hate
These acts that caused flames to grow
In our hearts the fire was ever-expanding its glow

These warriors who mothers and fathers saw them fall
Are a constant reminder to us all
Of how far we have come and how far we have to go
I only wish I could tell them so they would know

Know that they are missed and that we still care
That they were apart of the battles that we all share
The battle for justice and peace of mind
And for happiness in a world that can be so unkind
Even if we move two steps forward and one step back
Their memories keep us on the right track

By Destenie Nock January 31, 2016

Black Wall Street

I’d come to Little Africa with Quincy for a better way of life.  He’d heard black folk there had established their own community free of white folk.  They had their own homes, banks, law offices, hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, schools, a hospital and transportation.  We’d been there some four years before the burning of our beloved community on June 1, 1921.

I remembers the day well, Quincy had gotten up early for work, he’d let me sleep in for the mere fact that I was with child and close to birthing.  It was somewhere around noon when I got the first birth pain.  It was my first baby.  Lucky for us we lived three doors down from one of the midwives that had delivered a good number of the babies born in our community between 1918 and 1921, she says the count was 57 live births that she can remember and my little angel was to be the 58^th.  Miss Ella had sent her eldest boy, James Earl into town to fetch Quincy. 

The pain was something terrible.  I tried holding on so Quincy could be present for the birth of his first born.  But the sun was soon about to set and neither Quincy nor James Earl had returned.  It was just around that time; we heard what sound like planes flying over us and Miss Ella told me it’s time to push.  I cried out wanting to hold on just a little while longer for Quincy.  But, Ella demanded I push.  I let out my final push when Miss Ella announced it was a girl.  Just as she cut the cord, a group of white folk bust in the door shooting Ella right in the back of her head. While her lifeless body lay on top of me, I heard a white woman say no more niggers!  She ordered a young hoodlum no older than 14 years old to lynch that nigger baby with her own cord.  I cried out for Keziah – that’s what I would’ve named her after her great grandmother born a slave but died free. 

Angel: The Hanging tree

They were together every since he learned how to walk. The sturdy poplar tree he declared was his tree and he named her “Angel”. He would climb to the top of her large outstretched branches as a pirate looking for land and buried treasures, he used her green leaves as money bankroll his travels, and swing from limb to limb, hallowing and pretending to be Tarzan. He could be heard playing throughout the neighborhood.  This was the place he went to when he was sad after a spanking.  It was under this tree where he stole his first kiss, lost his virginity and carved a heart into Angel’s tree trunk.  It was the place where he demanded to take all of his graduation pictures and it was the last stop before he took the bus to college.  

The tree branches had been the place where he had experienced such a beautiful life now it would be the place where life would end. For the klans declared  “we are tired of these so called educated niggas coming back here stirring up people with talk about civil rights. They gonna git their rights but it won’t be to civil.” 

As this young Black man stood for the last time next to his beloved tree, they would have no options and no say.  Power has never belonged to an old tree and a young Black man. They knew without a doubt that being strong had sealed their fate. For his strength was seen as a threat and hers as a means to eliminate that threat. As the rope was placed around one of her large branches and then the noose around his neck, a stillness seemed to surround them and rain came out of nowhere in the middle of a beautiful sunny day. It was as if the universe was taking a pause and was crying because the power of their unwavering love would be forever stained by the unyielding power of hate and the slaughter of another Black man.