“The chapter does not end with us. Why? Because we hold the pen.”
We spent a day at the Equal Justice Initiative The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration where our students and staff studied and reflected on the history of needless suffering through racial violence and mass incarceration.
Here’s one such reflection in the form of a poem by Fynn:
People lived and breathed here.
People grew families here, like trees reaching for the sun.
Someone cried here.
Someone experienced the beginning of life here.
Someone’s spirit left their body here,
on this ground,hallowed ground.
All ground is hallowed,
all ground has history,
And we don’t know it.
The human story is a painful things,
turn places, a burned flag,
Foot prints marked that no one sees,
nothing to say but “we remember you”.
“We continue your legacy”.
Murdered, remembered, delegating change,
we must acknowledge the past.
We live in the present.
We’re fighting for a future,
the one we define collectively.
May it be one be loved, not destructive,
may we learn our story,
may we realize the chapter does not end with us,why?
Because we hold the pen.
