The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro – hakim bellamy

Written in part by and in response to Frederick Douglass’s speech “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.” Originally, delivered in his then home of Rochester, NY on July 5th, 1852.

The fireworks
still smell like gunpowder

while we still gather ‘round
the bodies of Black men
for blood, sport and tears

we still pretend
that this nation
has ever gotten something
without taking it from someone else
including freedom

and have the nerve to call it “Independence”

the meaning
of July fourth for the negro
hasn’t changed

it remains
a celebration of conquest
a champagne of blood
flooding the picnics beneath
the poplar tree
right underneath our dangling feet

this holiday
still feels like PTSD

making a mockery of us
like 300 years of slavery
was nothing more than a bad dream
like making the Declaration of Independence
a document of convenience
is uniquely American

as if
all men are created people
but Black men are created lethal
and Black women are a threat too
because they just keep pumping out Black votes

our esteemed forefathers
of brain and boast
have my respect
but cannot have my right
to read between the stripes
and stars

white hot flashes of light
did you ever notice,
that the stars look like gunfire?

that our flag
hangs like a civilian
paper target at the shooting range
shots to the heart
like fifty

colors running down
in bars
across this country’s white skin

Standing with God
and the crushed and bleeding slave
on this occasion, I will,
in the name of humanity
which is outraged,
in the name of liberty
which is fettered,
in the name of the constitution
and the Bible
which are disregarded and trampled upon,
dare to call in question
and to denounce,
with all the emphasis I can command,
everything that serves to perpetuate
the great sin and shame of America

where we still confuse
free liberty with free Labor,
just as we did 161 years to the day
I delivered these words

made immigration
the new institutional slavery
and prisons
the new world plantation

as our neighborhood watch
becomes mobs of one
with a gun and
modern-day lynchings
go to trial on TV

still not letting us be human
only a fraction
still not letting us be men
only boys
until we stand our ground
until we are a threat
until we are probable cause
until we are self-defense

only then
are we more than a man
then, we are animals
brute and beast

pig, pork and beef
the barbeque
still smells like flesh
like discipline
then dinner

like no time to cry
complain, console
or celebrate poverty

like this is still a war
and stopping for a moment
to mourn your dead
could mean you’re next

there’s always been a war on thugs
it’s just been on the wrong ones
we never wanted the drugs or the guns
but that’s extremely hard to overcome

in a country
whose bomb’s bursting in air
and rockets red glare
at us

and the shelling
still reminds me of Sharpsburg
I still duck
when I hear the American Revolution
exploding above me
I still have hope that it will trickle down
I still flinch
when people call this “Independence Day”
so I call it “July Fourth”
I call it what it is

What, to the American slave,
is your 4th of July?
You ask…

I answer;
a day that reveals to him,
more than all other days in the year,
the gross injustice and cruelty
to which he is the constant victim.
To him, your celebration is a sham;
your boasted liberty, an unholy license;
your national greatness, swelling vanity;
your sounds of rejoicing […]
empty and heartless;
your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence;
your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns,
your sermons and thanksgivings,
with all your religious parade and solemnity,
are, to Him, mere bombast,
fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy –
a thin veil to cover up crimes
which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the earth
guilty of practices more shocking and bloody
than are the people of the United States,
at this very hour…
still.

© Hakim Bellamy July 3, 2013