By: Amiri Baraka

For Malcolm’s eyes,
when they broke the face of some dumb men.
For Malcolm’s hands raised to bless us
all black and strong in his image of ourselves,
for Malcolm’s words fire darts,
the victor’s tireless thrusts,
words hung above the world change as it may,
he said it, and for this he was killed,
for saying, and feeling, and being/change,
all collected hot in his heart,
For Malcolm’s heart, raising us above our filthy cities,
for his stride, and his beat, and his address
to they grey monsters of the world,
For Malcolm’s pleas for your dignity, black men, for your life,
black men, for the filling of your minds
with righteousness,
For all of him dead and gone and vanished from us,
and all of him which clings to our speech black god of our time.
For all of him, and all of yourself, look up,
black man, quit stuttering and shuffling, look up,
black man quit whining and stooping, for all of him,
For Great Malcolm a prince of the earth,
let noting in us rest
until we avenge ourselves for his death, stupid animals

FOR MALCOLM WHO WALKS IN THE EYES OF OUR CHILDREN

By: Quincy Troupe

He had been coming a very long time,
had been here many times before
in the flesh of other persons
in the sprit of other gods

His eyes had seen flesh turned too stone,
had seen stone turned too flesh
had swam within the minds
of a billion great heroes,

had walked amongst builders
of nations, of the Sphinx, had built
with his own hands those nations,

had come flying across time a cosmic spirit,
an idea, a though wave transcending
flesh fusion spirit of all centuries,
had come soaring like a sky break

above ominous clouds of sulfur
in a stride so enormous it spanned
the breadth of a peoples bloodshed,
came singing like Coltrane breathing life
into stone statues formed from lies

Malcolm, flaming cosmic sprit who walks
amongst us, we hear your voice
speaking wisdom in the wind,
we see your vision in the life/fires of men,
in our incredible young children
who watch your image
flaming in the sun

MEDGAR EVERS, 1925-1963

ARLINGTON CEMETERY

by: Margaret Walker

So they laid him down in a beautiful place:
In a beautiful place to sleep and rest.
There his anguished life and our pulsing love
That beat in his heart and burned in his face,
They are quiet now, they are hushed and still,
But the world will forever mark this hill
Where they laid him down to sleep and rest
Where they laid him down in a beautiful place.

The birds overhead will build their nests;
In the twilight hours sing a serenade.
The grass will gradually creep into shade
Where this martyred man sleeps unafraid.
And he will have neighbors good and true
Who have given their lives for freedom, too.

MICAH (In memory of Medgar Evers of Mississippi)

by: Margaret Walker

Micah was a young man of the people
Who came up from the streets of Mississippi
and cried out his Vision to his people:
Who stood fearless before the waiting throng
Like an astronauts shooting into space.
Micah was a man who spoke against Oppression
Crying: Woe to you Workers of iniquity!
Crying: Woe to you doers of violence!
Crying: Woe to you breakers of the peace!
Crying: Woe to you, my enemy!
For when I fall I shall rise in the deathless dedication.
When I stagger under the wound of your paid assassin
I shall be whole again in deathless triumph!
For your rich men are of violence
and your mayors of your cites speak lies.
They are full of deceit.
We do not fear them.
They shall not enter the City of good-will.
We shall dwell under out own vine and fig tree in peace.
And they shall not be remembered in the Book of Life.
Micah was a man.

FIVE BLACK MEN

By: Margaret Walker

Douglass, Du Bois, Garvey, King, and Malcolm X
Five black men whose leadership we cherish
in the history books
from Slavery to Segregation and the Age of Integration
down the primrose path to face oblivion

Five Black Men...
and ten will save the city.

Douglass was the first
brooding face upon our dark waters
rising out of twilight
clutching stars
daring the sun
casting light from all ages
on our miserable circumstance.

Yes, we know our black brothers in Africa
sold their mothers and sisters into slavery.
Yes, we know our white brothers in Europe
packed us like sardines in cans on their stinking ships
and we dies like flies.

“I have known the curse of slavery
and the master’s cruel will
the overseer’s lash and the reveille at dawn;
when the freedom talkers came
they called my name
but I was not on the roll of the chained
nor the dead
lying before the merciless pity of the Yankees.
I was long since gone.
Lincoln and Garrison
John Brown and the Alcotts
they were all the same--
aflame with one true mockery
of freedom, truth, and faith
but not for the brotherhood.
I tell you my fellow shackled human race
we must strike the first blow.
We must be free
by the blood of our own humanity.”

Five Black Men...
and ten will save the city.

Du Bois was Renaissance...
Ancient Egypt, Thebes, and Memphis
Cush and Temples of Karnak, Luxor, and Parthenon
They were his temples too.
He stood astride the chasm of yawning worlds
bridging the centuries
holding bolts of lightning
electric in his fist.
First social doctor of our century
analyzing our lives our cities, our towns and schools;
loving our people
and understanding
how western man built his system
on labor of our lives
cheap labor, slave from dusk till dawn;
how they made a myth out a race
joined it to their Christianity
and annihilated our lives.
Du Bois reminded us and prophesied:
“The problem of the twentieth century will be the color line.”

Five Black Men...
and ten will save the city.

Marcus Garvey.
Up, you mighty Race!
And clench your fist against the sky.
Black is beautiful.
Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud.
Visionary, man of destiny,
Black Messiah?
The United Negro Improvement Association lives.
The black star ascends.
The black ships and black cross nurses
all are part of a lost black empire.
They followed Garvey from the grass roots
by the tens, by the hundreds,
and then by the thousands;
marched down Lenox Avenue in the New York
And State Street in Chicago.
Then the mighty ones saw his power.
Was he really guilty of mail fraud
or was that a way the GI guys could stop him?
A way to make him rot in jail in Atlanta
in the USA

Discredited, denounced, deported,
but not destroyed.
First black nationalist of this century;
Big Black Men, you were never small.
You gave black men hope and dignity and Face.
Up, I say, Up, you mighty Race!

Five Black Men...
and ten will save the city.

“The King is Dead” Long live the King!”
He gave us more than life.
“If they ask you why he came
tell them he came
to wake the conscienceless...
tell them he came
to teach us how to dream.”

Atlanta born
Educated there and in Boston
pastor of Dexter Street Baptist Church
Downtown in Montgomery
He led us through the bloody streets of Birmingham
We walked and talked with him
in Mississippi and Iowa
in Cicero and Harlem
Our hearts followed him to Oslo
And we held our breath
to see his meteor in the sky
Shocked by the assassin’s rifle in Memphis
we sorrowed and we spoke
same gun that killed Medgar
same gun that killed Kennedy
same gun.
The King is dead. Long live the king!
A man of peace is immortal
beyond the price of segregation.

Five Black Men...
and ten will save the city.

The old man had the message.
The old man never went to school
but he sent his sons.
The old man knew the depth of hatred
between the races
and he knew the history of hatred
between Jew and Christian and Moslem.
He preached his message from Allah
The message he received from Mr. Fard.
I remember those early days
when the brothers of Mecca
wore red fezzes
dressed neatly
and walked circumspectly
in our neighborhoods.
I remember when children turned their heads
curiously to see
why they look so different
so strange among us
and yet were black like us.
Tell me now the old man amassed a fortune
Tell me now the old man had his lieutenant killed.
Tell me now the brothers killed Malcolm.
And I cannot believe you.
Nothing inside my gut reaction tells me this is true.

Malcolm, the man
Big Cat
was feline in his grace;
leonine head
and cat eyes
and hair to match his lion’s sign:
Big Red

Only when he lay dead
and in his funeral Moslem dress
did we cast Christian eyes of wonder upon him.
“Ye shall know a tree by the fruit it bears.”
too late to know
how measureless for all time was this man.

Five Black Men....
and ten the city.

Martin and Malcolm
were leaders of men.
They made revolutions.
They fought wars.
They drew battlelines
and never once
with loaded guns.
Their words were their weapons.
Their deeds were their monuments.
No two men more unlike
yet in all that matters they were the same.
In one bright, hopeless, fated Cause
they were brothers.

Five Black Men...
and ten will save the city.