Showing posts with label "Kids Who Die (Ferguson to Baltimore) ". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Kids Who Die (Ferguson to Baltimore) ". Show all posts

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Kids Who Die (Ferguson to Baltimore)


Gregg Chadwick

Kids Who Die (Ferguson to Baltimore) 
24”x48” oil on linen 2015

inspired by Langston Hughes and the #BlackLivesMatter movement 


Kids Who Die

by Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people
And the old and rich don't want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don't want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

Listen, kids who die
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies'll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter's field,
Or the rivers where you're drowned like Leibknecht

But the day will come
You are sure yourselves that it is coming
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.

Must Watch Reading of Hughes Poem - Kids Who Die: A Tribute to the Movement (Narrated by Danny Glover)
youtu.be/e5k2pfkXd0c