Naughty Negros - Ernie Carpenter

[Larry Robinson]

Naughty Negros

Those Negros weren’t acting right,
When peckerwoods ruled the land.
Back then, they said,
if the Mississippi River,
dried up one night,
The waking of the murdered black bodies,
Rising and walking
out of the holding,
gripping mud,
shaking off indignity;
slavery, 
night riders,
humiliation, 
rape,
sold down the river,
that silent line,
would wind from Natchez to 
Detroit in the light.

What sounds would they make? 
Pulling air into reborn
lungs, new breath,
moving wrapped and
fallow limbs like a chrysalis
breaking into
the light.
Free now.
What choice,
oh, naughty noble warrior,
Can you reveal to push 
back
The night?

After slavery, some 
deny and even glorify,
a period of lynching,
 too gruesome a sight for
Lady peckerwoods dinner flight,
so, they came in the middle of the night.
Terror and fear geared to bringing
Power to those who happened to be
White. Oh, they were never
Close to God or being right.


Negros up and moved to the northern hoods.
Lynching and burning were not evident.