MY BLACK HISTORY POEM

BY DOREEN AMBROSE-VAN LEE

First off, I want to be the very reason that you are celebrating Black History on this day,

Historian, Carter G. Woodson.

Secondly, I want to lead you to safety like Harriet Tubman,

While we are on our way,

I want to stop traffic like Garrett Morgan,

Before we get there, I want to right all wrongs like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

While we are here I want to ensure that our minds and spirits are in the right place

and then we will get our hearts pumping like Dr. Daniel Hale Williams,

So that we can run through fields of green and gold like Jesse and Wilma,

Then dance to the beat of a thousand drums like Katherine Dunham and Josephine Baker,

I want to be the first up to bat like Jackie and HANK,

I want to resound through your ears and your memory BANK!

Like Mahalia, Marion, Billie and Aretha!

I want to be the first woman that you could not clearly confine to a ballot a box or a prism,

I want to be the first black woman elected to Congress and to run for President, Shirley Chisholm.

I want to fight battles like Muhammad and Joe,

I want to take a stand so that others may sit in comfort,

Like Ida and Rosa.

I want to give of my life, time, heart, mind, body and soul so that future generations

won't have to sit in the back and sit on the sidelines like Martin, Marcus, Medgar and Malcolm.

I want to soar through the bluest of skies like the courageous Tuskegee Airmen, Ronald

McNair and Dr. Mae Jemison.

I want to be the first beauty you recognize like Vanessa Williams.

I want to undermine and backhand stereotypes like Althea, Venus and Serena.

I want to be the first to paint broad presidential brush strokes of the first African American President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle

With hues of justice like Kehinde Wiley.

I want to be the first black president of South Africa like Nelson Mandela.

I want to act like Kings and Queens like Harry, Sidney, Lena, Dorothy and Cicely.

I want to live on through the pages of your memory, Like Maya, Alice, Zora, Lorraine,

Langston and James, can't you see?