Burke Jim - When thunder comes: poems for civil rights leaders

For civil rights activists the
world over J. P. L.

Text 2013 by J. Patrick Lewis.

The Child 2012 by J. Patrick Lewis.

Illustrations on 2013 by Jim Burke.

Illustrations on 2013 by R. Gregory Christie.

Illustrations on 2013 by Tonya Engel.

Illustrations on 2013 by John Parra.

Illustrations on 2013 by Meilo So.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any

form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-1944-1

Book design by Lauren Michelle Smith.

Typeset in Felina Serif.

The illustrations in this book were rendered in oil, acrylic,

and watercolor.

Chronicle Books LLC

680 Second Street, San Francisco, California 94107

www.chroniclekids.com

Poems for Civil Rights Leaders

BY J. PATRICK LEWIS

20112013 Childrens Poet Laureate

ILLUSTRATED BY JIM BURKE, R. GREGORY CHRISTIE, TONYA ENGEL, JOHN PARRA, AND MEILO SO

The poor and dispossessed take up the drums

For civil rightsfreedoms to think and speak,

Petition, pray, and vote. When thunder comes,

The civil righteous are finished being meek.

Why Sylvia Mendez bet against long odds,

How Harvey Milk turned hatred on its head,

Why Helen Zia railed against tin gods,

How Freedom Summers soldiers faced the dread

Are tales of thunder that I hope to tell

From my thin bag of verse for you to hear

In miniature, like ringing a small bell,

And know a million bells can drown out fear.

For history was mute witness when such crimes

Discolored and discredited our times.

the activist

We wept when the man was taken,

But we knew it was meant to be.

Daylilies drooped in the garden;

Night birds fell dumb in the tree.

We expected the worst of the future,

For the future was seldom bright,

And they carried away on the killing day

The last of the first daylight.

She moved to the front unbeaten,

Stepped slowly up to the board.

When she lost the man to the Ku Klux Klan

Her silent shadow roared.

Out in the enemy country,

Death marshaled itself for a fight,

But she led a choir in the line of fire

The first of the next daylight.

Stand tall, stand all my children,

Put away the sinister guns.

Embrace the boys that Hate employs,

Like mothers do their sons.

Daylilies can bloom in the garden,

Night birds can sing in the night,

When dignity has set us free

The rest of the best daylight.

Coretta Scott King
Civil rights leader
19272006

When the people called me Daw, meaning

Auntie or Madam, the General hiccupped.

When my husband, who was not allowed

to visit me in Burma, died of cancer,

the General took a holiday.

When I was awarded the Rafto, Sakharov,

Nehru Prizes, the Congressional Gold Medal,

the General brushed the dust from his epaulets.

When I won the Nobel Peace Prize for defending

the rights of my people, they changed Generals.

When I refused food to protest my detention,

the new General stuffed himself on mangoes

and banana pudding.

When a cyclone flicked off the roof of my prison

like the Queen of Hearts, turning my life to shame

and candle, the General had a mole removed.

When they added four words to the constitution

my nameto bar me from ever running for office,

the General signed it with his fingernail made of

diamonds and disgust.

Aung San Suu Kyi
Burmese pro-democracy activist
1945

Our national pastime by the name

Of baseball was once mired in shame.

A prejudice-sized fear

Whitewashed the truth when history wrote

An unforgivable footnote

The asterisk career.

Tape-measuring his home-run success,

800 of em more or less,

Wont get you very far.

Josh Gibson always knew the score...

Only to die three months before

The black man broke the bar.

He hit a mile the Jim Crow snub

No coloreds in a white mans club.

All anyone could do

Was name him to the Hall of Fame,

A tower in the tarnished game

That Gibson never knew.

Josh Gibson
Baseball Hall of Famer
19111947

Dark on that Mississippi Delta day,

My baby Emmett fell so far from grace

That Justice... what would Justice have to say?

I taught him not to sass or disobey.

They said he shamed a white girl to her face.

Dark on a Mississippi Delta day,

They beat him bloody, oh, they made him pay.

They kicked him, shot, then drowned him just in case

And Justice could not find the words to say.

The killers were acquitted, by the way,

As Southern virtue gussied up in lace

Dark on a Mississippi Delta day.

They closed Emmetts casket to my dismay.

Seemed like to me it was a hiding place.

So Emmetts mama found the words to say.

I laid my bloodied boy out on display.

But fifty thousand mourners wont erase

Dark from that Mississippi Delta day

When Justice did not have one word to say.

Mamie Carthan Till
Mother
19212003

The outcast sits and prays, or sleeps,

Untroubled by a humans touch.

From his oppressive seat, he keeps

Away from you at least as much.

His house is on the street: the curb.

His body signifies, Beware.

The flag he waves, Do Not Disturb,

No one can see, and still its there.

Such savage rites, decreed by caste,

Divined by birth, and quick with rot,

Ensure one hostage to the past

Will be this godforsaken lot.

My children, I shall end my days

Reminding you: Your greatest sin

Done to these humble castaways

Is to forget the state youre in.

For we are not the ones to say

What will erode and what endure,

Where the iron, where the clay,

Who the foul and who the pure.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Political and spiritual leader of India
18691948