Free, Free, Free With a Finger in the Face on the Tarmac

“Free, free, free, thank God Almighty, free

At last,” but the bespectacled, respected J. W. Comer,

Self-made man from a Southern family of self-made men,

At least that’s how the story went, oversaw the post-reconstruction

Rise with the help of a ten-pronged strap on the back of slavery —

Beyond slavery – post reconstruction laws making it a felony for a freed,

Former slave who stole a piglet for dinner, or a piece of fence wood for the

Fire to roast the pig or anything—

 

Didn’t whites in the South ever break any laws?

 

Mouthy, uppity NEEE—GROWS are surged into round ‘em up

Arrests right around harvest time and anytime in the mines and

Factories, rising in the South which was in the process of rising

Again, once again on the backs of Blacks.

 

But the stupid, brutal system based on revenge was using up the

Supply — attrition by death — so incarceration was that much

More important than ever, ever since Scarlett, with the back of her

Hand placed against her forehead, stated in exasperation that she

Would think about all that tomorrow.

 

Then the scholarly, but no less cowardly scaredy-cats in their Ivory

Towers to keep them safe from the mean streets, the sociologists,

Psychologists and all the Social Darwinian- ists pronounced their

Quasi-scientific blessing upon the blatant bias and pronounced the

Incarcerated as sub-human, scary, brutal, black beasts and we all

Locked our car doors giving a faux intellectual veneer and justification

To the repression lived out in dead bodies swinging from

 

Cypress trees, burned to a crisp in a grisly, bonfire re-enactment of Alexander

Pope’s poem about the savory discovery of roast “boef.”  Why?

Because it could be done, was done and is still being done

In some modern, civilized, legislatively legal way in Detroit,

Benton Harbor, Flint, Grand Rapids (May I see your photo I.D., PLEASE?

You duly elected officials may be excused, now and forever.) by those

God-fearing Northerners who look to their punitive, angry, vengeful, hateful,

 

Scaredy-cat Southern brothers and sisters for their next cue.

But, of course, none of this has anything, whatsoever to do with

A shout down of the President of the United States of America in

Those hallowed halls of Congress during a State of the Union

Address, or a shaking, sophomoric head from a new, pouting

Supreme Court Justice or a finger pointing in the half-black face of

The really Cool Man by the really witchy wo-man of the West on

The tarmac or the persistence of the Bible-believing deadly Birthers.

 

“No, nothing at all,” shout the scaredy-cats.  “Don’t yu’all see that

You have a Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday?  What more do you

Want?  Aren’t yu’all free, free, free at last?”

 

Oh, yeah, Jimmy Carter sees it for what it is, but, hey, the interest

Rate was 23% during his administration say the dismissive free

Marketers.