For Those Who Paid The Price - Kate Lore

[Lawrence Robinson]

For Those Who Paid The Price

They tried to keep you from the ballot,
from the box, from the promise
you already knew was yours.
Still you marched.
Still you bled.
Still you lifted your voices—
Suffragettes in white,
Freedom Riders on burning buses,
Marchers on the bridge at Selma,
Students registering voters in Mississippi,
Activists with disabilities crawling up the steps,
Ancestors unnamed,
All who dared to rise.
Through tear gas and firehoses,
through jeers and nightsticks,
through chains and lynch mobs,
through bombs and billy clubs,
through the long shadow of despair,
you kept moving forward—
a river of courage,
a multitude of hope.
And still the ink was written in your names—
every amendment, every hard-won law,
signed not by pen alone
but by the courage of your bodies,
by the sacrifice of your lives.
Today the tyrant would erase your gift,
call it corrupt,
call it unworthy,
call it his to take away.
But your blood still speaks.
Your footsteps still echo.
Your voices still rise.
We are bound to you.
We will not forget.
Your struggle is our summons,
your victory our charge.
We carry you in our bones,
in our breath, in our ballots—
and while we rise,
freedom rises with us.

	- Kate Lore