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by Dee Allen
Headed to the "promised land" in droves
Attracted to bright urban lights
Like a swarm of sepia-toned moths
They arrive
In search of work
Safer homes
Altars to pray to
In search of the peace that
Living in the so-called
"Bible Belt"did not give them.
What kind of god
Would allow its own children to
Endure the jail cell
The slurs
Out of the mouths of babes & rednekkks
The noose that broke the neck
From a tree
Strung-up
For the crime of
Being born Black
The white hoods that made their Heaven
By making innocent lives Hell?
What kind of god
Would abandon its own children
To the mercy of hate?
To doors being shut to them
Because they are descendants of the enslaved?
They arrive
With a different kind of home in their hearts
Amongst the dark mass, a
Tslagi teenage girl, her Black carpenter husband and their
Two daughters [one a half-breed] leave Virginia in the dust
Headed to the "promised land"
In the shadow of the Great Depression.
The Deep North welcomes them all.
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