The Black Belt Chorus
Cheryl Lynn Moyer
One day Rosa Parks was just too tired
Of accepting that’s how things are
Martin Luther King had a prophetic vision
He wouldn’t live to see the mountaintop
Sweltering heat, poverty, racism and despair
Still claim all the breathing space
Between the catfish ponds and the cottonfields
The blind, the crippled, the poor, the elderly
Bundle up in layers hugging their own warmth
To sleep at night... staring at falling stars
Through their cracked and rusty sky
Children nibble a mouldy potato
Abandoned cars, corpulent vultures
Loveless dogs walking nowhere
Claim these back rural dusty roads
Raw sewage pours into the open grass
The sun bakes it all hard and crusty
You can clean motel rooms for a dollar each
Walk four miles to wash a white woman’s clothes
Beg a ride to the grocery store
Mothers sing their Baptist prayers
For your children’s sake you stay alive
College educated students have escaped
Rewarded with real jobs, real pay, real benefits
In the cities and way up north
Their mothers used a switch with loving hands
To help them find their blackbird wings
But once they’ve tasted
Respect, human dignity, a life worth living
They can’t go home again
They can’t sleep there
There’s no peace in their souls
Only fear, anger, defiance
And the god damned bloody tears
