Black Looks

• “The last word has not been spoken” – Beah Richards

  Posted: March 31, 2011, 7:06 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  I’ve watched Beah Richards in many films and I remember reading somewhere about her poetry. But I never knew she was a feminist, wrote powerful political poetry speaking truth to power; was a playwright, a strong fiercely political, inspirationally powerful Black woman. Richards had no fear of speaking out at on her commitment to truth and freedom at political rallies. What frightened her was fascism not communism, after all as she said “I grew up in Mississippi and lived with it every day”. In an interview with the director and co-producer, LisaGay Hamilton – who herself must be congratulated for such a selfless work of art – Ann Marie Offer, described Beah Richards as a “Minister of Human Dignity.” what an apt obituary for such a great woman.

  Like most life stories the film is full of those joys and sadnesses we all pass through – some better and worse than others. At the time of the interviews, Beah was suffering from the last stages of emphysema and was on oxygen 24 hours a day. Her next to last journey, back home to Mississippi, in which she leaves her home of 25 years, is one of those indescribable painful sadnesses which sap your strength leaving you weak and utterly forelorn.

  3 months later, Beah Richards received an Emmy Award for her role in the series, “Practice” and soon after she passed away. Her last request was that her ashes be scattered on the confederate graveyard in Mississippi – even death was to be made an act of struggle.

  Her life story is told in the film “Beah: A Black Woman Speaks” a documentary film by LisaGay Hamiliton. As a young woman trying to be an actress and dancer in Hollywood in the 1950s and facing the proverbial slammed door, Beah decided to go to New York. She was penniless and hearing about a peace conference in Chicago with a prize for the poem which best expressed peace, she decided to enter her poem “A Black Woman Speaks……” Beah entered a poetry competition. I never heard of this poem yet it’s at least as powerful as Sojourner Truth’s’ “Aint I a Woman“. The poem speaks to the primordial memory of pre-Americas, slavery, rape, imprisonment, racism,humiliation, lynchings and centuries of dehumanization of Black peoples. The poem though it speaks to these vile memories and realities, is a poem of resistance. An act of survival and despite the terrible hardships of the journey from there to here, I, we remain standing our pride in tact.

  I kept your sons and daughters alive.

  But when they grew strong in blood and bone
  that was of my milk
  you
  taught them to hate me.
  PUt your decay in their hearts and upon their lips
  so that strength that was of myself
  turned and spat upon me,
  despoiled my daughters, and killed my sons.
  You know I speak true.
  Though this is not true for all of you

  A BLACK WOMEN SPEAKS…
  OF WHITE WOMANHOOD
  OF WHITE SUPREMACY
  OF PEACE
  
  A poem by BEAULA RICHARDSON

  Read by Beaula Richardson at the Women’s Workshop at the American People’s Peace Congress held in Chicago on June 29, 30 and July 1, 1951 bringing a standing ovation from all 500 women attending.

  It is right that I a woman
  black,
  should speak of white womanhood.
  my fathers
  my brothers
  my husbands
  my sons
  die for it: because of it.
  and their blood
  chilled in electric chairs,
  stopped by hangman’s noose,
  cooked by lynch mobs’ fire,
  spilled by white supremacist mad desire to kill
  give me that right

  I would that I could speak of white womanhood
  as it will and should be
  when it stands tall in full equality.
  but then, womanhood will be womanhood.
  Void of color and of class,
  And all necessity for my speaking thus will be past.
  Gladly past.

  But now, since ‘tis deemed a thing apart
  Supreme,
  I must in searching honesty report
  How it seems to me.
  White womanhood stands in bloodied skirt
  and willing slavery
  reaching out adulterous hand
  killing mine and crushing me.
  What then is the superior thing
  That in order to be sustained must needs feed upon my flesh?
  Let’s look to history.

  They said, the white supremacist said
  that you were better than me,
  that your fair brow would never know the sweat of slavery.
  They lied
  White womanhood to is enslaved,
  The difference is degree.

  They brought me here in chains.
  They brought you here willing slaves to man.
  You, shiploads of women each filled with hope
  That she might win with ruby lip and saucy curl
  And bright and flashing eyes
  Him to wife who had the largest tender.
  Remember?
  And they sold you here even as they sold me.
  
  My sisters, there is no room for mockery.
  If they counted my teeth
  They did appraise your thigh
  And sold you to the highest bidder
  The same as I.

  And you did not fight for your right to choose
  Whom you would wed
  But for whatever bartered price
  That was the legal tender
  You were sold to a stranger’s bed
  In a stranger land
  Remember?
  And you did not fight.
  Mind you, I speak not mockingly
  But I fought for freedom,
  I’m fighting now for our unity.
  We are women all.
  And what wrongs you murders me
  And eventually marks your grave
  So we share a mutual death at the hand of tyranny.

  They trapped me with the chain and gun.
  They trapped you with lying tongue.
  For, ‘less you see that fault—
  That male villainy
  That robbed you of name, voice and authority,
  That murderous greed that wasted you and me,
  He, the white supremacist, fixed your minds with poisonous thought:
  “white skin is supreme.”
  And there with bought that monstrous change
  exiling you to things.
  Changed all that nature had in you wrought of gentle usefulness, abolishing your spring.
  Tore out your heart,
  set your good apart from all that you could say,
  think,
  feel,
  know to be right.
  And you did not fight,
  but set your minds fast on my slavery
  the better to endure your own.

  ‘Tis true
  my pearls were beads of sweat
  wrung from weary bodies’ pain,
  instead of rings upon my hands
  I wore swollen, bursting veins.
  My ornaments were the wipe-lash’s scar
  my diamond, perhaps, a tear.
  Instead of paint and powder on my face
  I wore a solid mask of fear to see my blood so spilled.
  And you, women seeing
  spoke no protest
  but cuddled down in your pink slavery
  and thought somehow my wasted blood
  confirmed your superiority.

  Because your necklace was of gold
  you did not notice that it throttled speech.
  Because diamond rings bedecked your hands
  you did not regret their dictated idleness.
  Nor could you see that the platinum bracelets which graced your wrists were chains
  binding you fast to economic slavery
  And though you claimed your husband’s name
  still could not command his fidelity.

  You bore him sons.
  I bore him sons.
  No, not willingly.
  He purchase you.
  He raped me,
  I fought!
  But you fought neither for yourselves nor me.
  Sat trapped in your superiority
  and spoke no reproach.
  Consoled your outrage with an added diamond brooch.
  Oh, God, how great is a woman’s fear
  who for a stone, a cold, cold stone
  would not defend honor, love or dignity!

  Your bore the damning mockery of your marriage
  and heaped your hate on me,
  a woman too,
  a slave more so.
  And when your husband disowned his seed
  that was my son
  and sold him apart from me
  you felt avenged.
  Understand:
  I was not your enemy in this,
  I was not the source of your distress.
  I was your friend, I fought.
  But you would not help me fight
  thinking you helped only me.
  Your deceived eyes seeing only my slavery
  aided your own decay.
  Yes, they condemned me to death
  and they condemned you to decay.
  Your heart whisked away,
  consumed in hate,
  used up in idleness
  playing yet the lady’s part
  estranged to vanity.
  It is justice to you to say your fear equaled your tyranny.

  You were afraid to nurse your young
  lest fallen breast offend your master’s sight
  and he should flee to firmer loveliness.
  And so you passed them, your children, on to me.
  Flesh that was your flesh and blood that was your blood
  drank the sustenance of life from me.
  And as I gave suckle I knew I nursed my own child’s enemy.
  I could have lied,
  told you your child was fed till it was dead of hunger.
  But I could not find the heart to kill orphaned innocence.
  For as it fed, it smiled and burped and gurgled with content
  and as for color knew no difference.
  Yes, in that first while
  I kept your sons and daughters alive.

  But when they grew strong in blood and bone
  that was of my milk
  you
  taught them to hate me.
  PUt your decay in their hearts and upon their lips
  so that strength that was of myself
  turned and spat upon me,
  despoiled my daughters, and killed my sons.
  You know I speak true.
  Though this is not true for all of you

  When I bestirred myself for freedom
  and brave Harriet led the way
  some of you found heart and played a part
  in aiding my escape.
  And when I made my big push for freedom
  your sons fought at my sons’ side.
  Your husbands and brothers too fell in that battle
  when Crispus Attucks died.
  It’s unfortunate that you acted not in the way of justice
  but to preserve the Union
  and for dear sweet pity’s sake;
  Else how came it to be with me as it is today?
  You abhorred slavery
  yet loathed equality.

  I would that the poor among you could have seen
  through the scheme
  and joined hands with me.
  Then, we being the majority, could long ago have recued
  our wasted lives.
  But no.
  The rich, becoming richer, could be content
  while yet the poor had only the pretense of superiority
  and sought through murderous brutality
  to convince themselves that what was false was true.

  So with KKK and fiery cross
  and bloodied appetites
  set about to prove that “white is right”
  forgetting their poverty.
  Thus the white supremacist used your skins
  to perpetuate slavery.
  And woe to me.
  Woe to Willie McGee.
  Woe to the seven men of Martinsville.
  And woe to you.
  It was no mistake that your naked body on an Esquire calendar
  announced the date, May Eighth.
  This is your fate if you do not wake to fight.
  They will use your naked bodies to sell their wares
  though it be hate, Coca Cola or rape.

  When a white mother disdained to teach her children
  this doctrine of hate,
  but taught them instead of peace
  and respect for all men’s dignity
  the courts of law did legislate
  that they be taken from her
  and sent to another state.
  To make a Troy Hawkins of the little girl
  and a killer of the little boy!

  No, it was not for the womanhood of this mother
  that Willie McBee died
  but for the depraved, enslaved, adulterous woman
  whose lustful demands denied,
  lied and killed what she could not possess.
  Only three months before another such woman lied
  and seven black men shuddered and gave up their lives.
  These women were upheld in these bloody deeds
  by the president of this nation,
  thus putting the official seal on the fate
  of white womanhood with in these United States.
  This is what they plan for you.
  This is the depravity they would reduce you to.
  Death for me
  and worse than death for you.

  What will you do?
  Will you fight with me?
  White supremacy is your enemy and mine.
  So be careful when you talk with me.
  Remind me not of my slavery, I know it will
  but rather tell me of your own.
  Remember, you have never known me.
  You’ve been busy seeing me
  as white supremacist would have me be,
  and I will be myself.
  Free!
  My aim is full equality.
  I would usurp their plan!
  Justice
  peace
  and plenty
  for every man, woman and child
  who walks the earth.
  This is my fight!

  If you will fight with me then take my hand
  and the hand of Rosa Ingram, and Rosalee McGee,
  and as we set about our plan
  let our Wholehearted fight be:
  PEACE IN A WORLD WHERE THERE IS EQUALITY.

  Thanks to @llapen who tweeted about the film – as Beah Richards said – “The last word has not been spoken”.

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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes