When something really resonates, I often find myself writing in my sleep. During my dreams I sometimes capture the perfect words to describe my thoughts and what is lingering my heart. When I wake the words have flown, and I struggle to recapture them so I can voice myself, my heart, my mind. Last night was the same. I wrote in my dream, had the perfect words to describe what the lyrics of “Strange Fruit” sung by Billie Holiday woke inside me. It was perfect, my words, my thoughts, accurately displayed. But with the rising sun they have faded and I am left trying to stumble my way through all I feel inside. 

I have always known of slavery, of lynching, of the horrors done to Black men and women. I read of them in black words on white pages, in history books and articles. I knew, but somehow, never “knew”. How is it that we can be taught dates and times and names and are never told the story? We’re never told in history class the way it smelled. The bodies hanging on trees, how the flies gather and the crows cry with greedy voices to devour our family. We’re never told how it would feel to stand beneath the shadow of your mother’s dead body, her eyes plucked away, her tongue sticking out, swollen in death because she choked and struggled at the end of a rope. A rope tied by angry, selfish men. We’re told and not. This is information, a picture we should all see and for some reason we have to hunt it out. Why? Why haven’t we been told ALL the stories? Why haven’t we been made to connect and feel like this is OUR history? Why do we say it is Black history when it is all of ours? The horror of it is ours. The pain they endured, all of it is OURS. They are US. They are our family and they are ignored. 

They cry, they hurt. They are WE. This horrible past is our responsibility. And don’t start the argument of “my family never owned slaves”, “my family-“ 

Shut up! That’s not the point. OWN THIS HISTORY. OWN THE HORROR. OWN AND ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR PAIN!

It happened, so show me. Show US. Make it REAL. 

Stop hiding behind shame and take responsibility. It belongs to us. It belongs to me. 

This is the history of my people, because they are MINE.

Make is Real – A Poem by L Becker

When you read of things in history class

It looks and feels the distant past

Very rarely do we compare

The distance in time from here to there

I read of slavery and do not see

Bodies swinging on the trees

I read words in black and white

Never feeling the urgency in the fight

For justice and equality

For human beings just to be free

It seems separate, disconnected from me

To this past I’ve been partially blind

Disconnected and not claiming it as mine

I have no distant relative

Who were killed because of their skin

I say what does this have to do with me?

Because what’s written doesn’t make me see

Doesn’t make me feel and realize

What children watching parents eaten by flies

I do not live inside their hearts

Having read only bits and parts

I am disconnected to the truth, to reality

Living in a bubble, white washed, so pretty

Tell me more than what is written and told

Make me feel, see, smell what it was like to be sold

Tell me more than facts and a date

Make me understand the root of hate

Bring the truth home to me

So I can finally truly be

Connected to the world in which I live

So at long last we can outlive

The past so broken and wrong

To acknowledge a people made strong

No longer shall I be

Disconnected from my world’s history.

Sparta still rests upon our threshold, holding us prisoner here in our beautiful city.  The people turn to Athene, asking her wisdom now that the great Pericles has perished.  The citizens of Athens tremble as another season of war comes upon us.  We turn now to wise Cleon to lead us against Sparta and to victory.  The death of Pericles lingers with us, the loss of him and his sons are a great loss to the people of Athens.  The plague still lingers within the walls of Athens and many sacrifice daily to the wise Goddess Athene and to Zeus to grant us deliverance and victory.  The only relief we have received is that Sparta is so terrified of the sickness within these walls it has retreated from Attica.

It has been two years since Sparta rose against us, since they invaded Attica and Pericles sent our fleet of proud triremes along their coast to suppress the unrest growing in the Peloponnese.  The audacity of that nation, to have announced their goal was to rid Greece of Athenian oppression.  Athenian oppression indeed, are we not the height of Hellas?  Are we not the dream to which all aspire?  Our achievements have earned enmity from those without, the Spartans are jealous of the heights to which our people have risen.  They attack us and force the peoples of Attica to make the long walls between Athens and Piraeus their home, while Sparta, with its thousands of hoplites have taken up the long fields around our city.  Our citizens, our soldiers wait on good Cleon to tell us what to do.  Fear is a strong current among the people of Athens, and only the gods know what we face in the months to come.  Summer approaches and the mass of Sparta’s army swells beyond our walls.  Inside the pyres burn as offerings are made to the gods and we wait, always wait for them to answer.

We can still draw hope from the words of Pericles as he addressed our citizens as he spoke the Funeral Oration last year. “We are still willing to encounter danger; we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.”  Pericles knew the greatness of Athens and of its people.  We will rise and fight, we are strong in our resolve and we have the might of the great Athene to guide us.

I have been told by my sources in the Council that clever Demosthenes, our new general has plans to lead an attack upon the Spartans, forcing their defeat.  Our navy still attacks and defends us; we are not without defense as our military stays strong, even in the face of the death toll the plague has caused.  We will strike back even as they plan to attack us once more as the year warms.

But still, our faith in the gods and in our leaders notwithstanding, there is much fear as rumors of the Spartans attacking Plataea spread throughout the city.  It is said the King of Sparta Archidamus II will lead the siege against Plataea this year.  Plataea it has been said is strategically beneficial to the Spartans as it will enable them to support their allies in Thebes.  At this time, these rumors have not been confirmed and we await the answers. War draws nigh and Athens will heed the call, we will be triumphant.  Mighty Athene grant Cleon and Demosthenes her wisdom in the battle yet to come.