A Negro Is Born Poem by Tony Adah

Out in a cradle of leaves
A child is born
His red limbs fore and hind
Kicking the spineless air
Where the lush meadows green sway
He stood weaned and towering in a farm, his long tale began.

He's captured and sold
Into a mighty Atlantic ship
Not even knowing where he's going
Tossed at sea, he's lonely but crammed
In a crowd, crushed and scarcely any
Pleasure but melancholy to behold
Food the stomach took
Still the inner hunger haunted
Like a ghost;
Who will feed his soul?

Locks of chains at wrist and ankle
Who will free his prisoned mind
Tell him why and where he's going?
He remains in chains
The ankles and wrists free
But the mind bound
He is sold and resold
In a constant change of masters
Cotton fields gazing at the changing
Hands that tended them.

There are whips and spanks
Hues and cries
The negro runs but no hiding place
A negro is born and reborn
With the northern melancholy
And the southern joy,
Some masters are kind
They set open the negro's brains
And put a chip of intellect;
A negro is free in the land he
Doesn't own, will not own
Still he has no other land
Than the one he was bought into

The world rolled its sleeves
To walk the negro free
He is born again,
An African American
This is where the real war begins-
To be in chains
Or free and die
That's the African American dilemma.