February 12, 1963

By Jacqueline Woodson

I am born on a Tuesday at University Hospital

Columbus, Ohio,

USA—

a country caught

between Black and White.

I am born not long from the time

or far from the place

where

my great-great-grandparents

worked the deep rich land

unfree

dawn till dusk

unpaid

drank cool water from scooped-out gourds

looked up and followed

the sky’s mirrored constellation

to freedom.

I am born as the South explodes,

too many people too many years

enslaved, then emancipated

but not free, the people

who look like me

keep fighting

and marching

and getting killed

so that today—

February 12, 1963

and every day from this moment on,

brown children like me can grow up

free. Can grow up

learning and voting and walking and riding

wherever we want.

I am born in Ohio but

the stories of South Carolina already run

like rivers

through my veins.

Source: Brown Girl Dreaming (Penguin, 2014)

Poetry and the Civil Rights Movement