Jacqueline Woodson - If You Come Softly

My birth certificate says: Female Negro

Mother: Mary Anne Irby, 22, Negro

Father: Jack Austin Woodson, 25, Negro

In Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr.
is planning a march on Washington, where

John F. Kennedy is president.

In Harlem, Malcolm X is standing on a soapbox
talking about a revolution.

Outside the window of University Hospital,

snow is slowly falling. So much already

covers this vast Ohio ground.

In Montgomery, only seven years have passed
since Rosa Parks refused

to give up

her seat on a city bus.

I am born brown-skinned, black-haired

and wide-eyed.

I am born Negro here and Colored there

and somewhere else,

the Freedom Singers have linked arms,

their protests rising into song:

Deep in my heart, I do believe

that we shall overcome someday.

and somewhere else, James Baldwin

is writing about injustice, each novel,

each essay, changing the world.

I do not yet know who Ill be

what Ill say

how Ill say it...

Not even three years have passed since a brown girl

named Ruby Bridges

walked into an all-white school.

Armed guards surrounded her while hundreds

of white people spat and called her names.

She was six years old.

I do not know if Ill be strong like Ruby.

I do not know what the world will look like

when I am finally able to walk, speak, write...

Another Buckeye!

the nurse says to my mother.

Already, I am being named for this place.

Ohio. The Buckeye State.

My fingers curl into fists, automatically

This is the way, my mother said,

of every babys hand.

I do not know if these hands will become

Malcolmsraised and fisted

or Martinsopen and asking

or Jamesscurled around a pen.

I do not know if these hands will be

Rosas

or Rubys

gently gloved

and fiercely folded

calmly in a lap,

on a desk,

around a book,

ready

to change the world...