Strange fruit, hanging from the poplar trees, were supposed to be distant memories. As if 150 years is enough time to learn to accept your decrees that all men are truly equal. That creed, gender, and race could not have made us any more similar, superior, or inferior to one another. A mother wouldn’t have to lose a brother to the system that’s supposed to protect him but smothers him instead. That hatred bred in the heart of the white man at the thought that his slave in cotton was free, was so diminished in 1863, it reminded that slave for a hundred more years that wearing cotton could not have made him any less a nigger or digger or target for trigger, than he was on the plantation. Because see, you can take the slave away from the plantation but he’s still a slave…in cotton. That forgotten is the inclination to picnic or pick nigs out, and that you sometimes get caught in how happy you are that your Susan goes to school with Lamar or that not too far away from your white picket fence, the Spencers moved in with their chocolate sons and daughters. That Mr. Spencer went to your alma mater and you can’t quite believe that somehow he’s gotten farther in life than you have. Except, that’s not quite true is it?

You want to know why the Black man is so Angry? Why shouldn't he be? Black man has seen all the fights for equality. Yet, he is still treated as the least equal to all. Black man pleads for help as "help" proceeds to strangle him, Eric Garner. Black woman hangs from the bars of Justice, Sandra Bland. Black child slain on his way home, Trayvon Martin. Black men are still being slain to this day by the hands of white men who were trained to know when to use deadly force, but make their own rules: Mike Brown, Oscar Grant, Terence Crutcher, Keith Lamont Scott. May they all Rest In Peace. You want to know why the Black man is so Angry? When a white man is killed, it's murder; Black man killed? It's Black on Black crime, which is apparently a lot worse than Blue on Black crime. Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, but Black Lives only seemed to matter when the season bore an abundance of cotton. White success is expected, but Black success is cause for alarm because the day Black people realize what they are worth, you might discover that forgiving and forgetting is a lot easier said than done.