Brother's Keeper

Slavery chains
Leaving bloodstains
Cotton fields, white as snow
Ground drips red against the plough
Liberty abstains
As the Master and servant remains
Plantations still stand
Dixie plays by the band
As Jim Crow shackles
The white man cackles
A rope and a tree
The innocent plea
As lynching reigns
Segragation rules maintain
The chains
Debt peonage blots
The penal code fills slots
A 'Hanging Tree' and gunshots
Red-lined urban decay
Another shot, another name slay
Hope betrays
The children at play
A crow caws
A spectacle draws
Mourning meemaws
The bell tolls
Embers burn from yesterday's coals
Lost generation of souls
A wasteland
The scarred hand

By Shannon McKemie, M.A.
Written: 07-06-2016

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten.
Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land! (Dan Emmett 1862)

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruite hangin' from the popular trees(Abel Meeropol 1939)