Chains

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.

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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.

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