I can still hear the cries of Native Africans on ships

A sorrowful filled goodbye hanging off their lips

Forced to make difficult voyages overseas

For a future of cotton and tobacco leaves

 

Slave owners dressed them in rags but couldn’t change their inner core

In Africa they were Kings and Queens and that’s no folklore

Overworked daily, starved, and unfed

Uncertain of their fate that lied ahead

 

Having nothing but hope, dreams, and imagination

They imagined a world beyond the plantation

They rejoiced when they heard the news of emancipation

Not knowing that it was the cousin to segregation

 

Rosa Parks got arrested because she wouldn’t move her feet

All she wanted was to ride the bus and to still have a seat

Young blacks today get arrested over violence and drugs

Afraid of hard work so they play gangsters and thugs

Last time I checked real gangsters wore suits

Not baggy jeans and timberland boots

 

Centuries later we’re insulting our ancestor’s bravery

Because we’re still confined by our own mental slavery

Just when you think we’re on the right track

We take one step forward to take two steps back

 

I know some young boys that can’t even write their own name

Yet the school system pushes them on with no shame

Dribbling a basketball wishing of riches and fame

But if there knee goes out then who is to blame

 

I know people who think that the Underground Railroad was actually a train

We cannot be prisoned by ignorance we must break the chain

It all begins by educating our ill-formed youth

Even if it means telling then the unglamorous truth

 

Tell them that we

Were the victims of steal away nights

But we persevered and made it to higher heights

Because we fought for our forgotten rights

Tell them that we

Are the forgotten children of Emmett Till

Still

Tell them that

Black boys wearing hoodies aren’t suspicious

Unless your intent is already malicious

Tell them about the dream and Martin Luther King

And how from every hilltop and hamlet he let freedom ring

Tell them about Obama a man of the people

Not above but equal

And how for the greater good he walks among the evil

Tell them

Tell them

Tell them

But that’s just the thing you have to tell them

don’t fault them for what they don’t know

You planted the seed so the knowledge you must help grow.