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HIS STORY

Michael H Brownstein

Once when I was teaching school,
the request was made of me to create
a lesson plan for Women's History Month,
and I got right on it beginning
with famous women of color, but--
too many took their fifteen minutes
and made them into Jessee Jackson time.
Rosa Parks was not the first to get arrested
for not giving up her seat, just the luckiest:
Jo Ann Robinson, literate and intelligent,
made her into the icon she became
and we forgot the others, some who died,
for refusing to move. and then there were the
Harriet Tubmans', smart and original,
his story denied them their true place
and found them another. She became
the head of the underground rairoad,
a woman with headaches who could not read,
but really one of our greatest spies
who could memorized Confederate orders
and pass them on word for word to Sherman.
Other women of color freed thousands of slaves,
but his story could not let Tubman be
and she became somebody else.
Two was enough to make me uncomfortable,
but there were others: Marva Collins
home schooled her children into fame
and yet what of Augustine Witt and Barbara Appleberry
and all of the others who did what she did
and gave the credit to everyone else.
His story is his story, personality
of the ones he wants us to know.
Let it go: Without Jo Ann Robinson
there would never have been a King.



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