"War's End" by Jan Barry |
Southern Heritage
By Jan Barry
After
Lee surrendered
The
South smugly won the Civil War—
Blacks
lost voting rights, civil rights, every rights
In
a reign of terror by hooded Confederates,
US
Army posts were commandeered
And
named for Confederate generals—
A
hundred years after the War Between the States
Yankees
were still the enemy in Southern parts—
A
Michigan mother assisting voting rights activists
Was
shot dead by the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama:
Viola
Liuzzo was targeted as a white woman aiding Blacks—
New
Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner
Were
murdered with Black civil rights worker James Chaney
By
the KKK assisted by police in Mississippi—
Half
a century and more to this day, the Confederate legacy
Still
leads the charge in Black-disdaining hearts—
In
the hip 21st century, after a Black president was elected twice,
Black
people are shot dead, choked to death
By
police across America—
Women
and men are assaulted by police in city after city
For
marching in inter-racial Black Lives Matter protests—
Lee
and other Confederate leaders were West Point grads,
Welcomed
back into the fold after the hostilities—
Not
so with Black folks emancipated by Lincoln
And
the Union forces—
The
first “colored” graduate of West Point
Was
“silenced” by classmates for four years—
The
Southern heritage is a long tradition
At
the US Military Academy and in the Army—
Ten
US Army posts are named for Confederate generals:
Benning,
Bragg, Beauregard, Gordon, Hill, Hood, Lee,
Pickett,
Polk and Rucker—
Nothing
was named for Henry O. Flipper,
Class
of 1877, born into slavery,
Court-martialed
for corresponding with a white woman
After
serving as a Buffalo soldier—
But
times are changing:
African-American
men and women are mayors in
Montgomery
Alabama, Atlanta Georgia, Washington DC
And
cities across America—
Across
the South, Confederate statues are being torn down
After
all this time—