As Black History Month Begins, Tell The Story

'Tell the story. Of our song that wafts upon honeysuckle melodies. Of the Blues and Jazz. Upon improvisations. And musical interpretations'

BOSTON, MA, USA - JULY 8, 2020: Close-up of Harriet Tubman Statue in Boston's South End neighborhood. Tubman, an African-American abolitionist will appear on the new $20 bill. (Shutterstock)

“Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter”
By John W. Fountain

We
Must
Tell
Our Own Stories

Tell Your Story…
Let Our Voices Resound
Let them ring from the depths of our souls
Wet with the tears of our ancestors
That it may fertilize the ground
For present generations
 And for generations to come
Let the stories of our collective tears, triumphs and also sufferings
Be the Golden Sun
That is the warmth of other daughters and sons
And let not our dreams of writing be deferred to fester & run

Tell Our Stories...
In the fullness of their redemptive splendor
Filled with the myriad complexities of
Life, Love and Tender
Memories
Of Rhapsodies
And countless Subtleties
Of our world
In our time
Pungent with the
Fragrance of our music
Rhythms & Rhymes
Of what obstacles we faced
Of those we embraced
Of the bridges we constructed
Of those who obstructed
And of those who denied us Justice
The story of how we overcame
And let us forget not the bittersweet reminiscences of those who were slain
Felled by homicidal rain
Flooded by crimson, blood-filled rivers of pain
By consuming waters of raging insanity
On destructive cresting waves of man’s inhumanity
So that there is a record for all eternity
Lest the “hunters” rewrite the story of you and me
Tell the story

African American slave family representing five generations all born on the plantation of J. J. Smith, Beaufort, South Carolina. (ShutterStock)

 Tell the story…
Of how we prevailed
Of how we assailed 
Against the centuries-old war against the “Black Body”
The story of how we overcame
By the ancestral strength of the Black Soul
By some times — Bathing in the tide of Negro spirituals and hymns
That washed over us
Made us feel whole
At other times — Standing in the sweetly scented memories 
and the dignity 
of the Unbroken Slave
whose indomitable unsleeping spirits
still rise & speak from the grave

Tell the story...
Of Black Love
Of Black Romance
Of pure burning Black Passion
And old-school, yearning Black slow dancing 
Of Black Kisses
And infinite Black Bliss
Of Black Christmases
And Black hopes, Black dreams and Black wishes

Tell the story...
Of our song that wafts upon honeysuckle melodies 
Of the Blues
And Jazz
Upon improvisations
And musical interpretations 
And divinely inspired creations
Seasoned with the majestic poetries 
And incomparable manifestations — of Black Life

Boys play in water spray from a fire hydrant at New York City in summer on Jul. 24 2016.

Tell the story…
Of our hopes
and dreams 
Of painted portraits of bursting white sprays 
From red fire hydrants 
On hot summer days 
As black children laugh and play
Beneath cloudless, blue ghetto skies
And no grieving mothers’ cries…
Of Bid Whist games
And backyard parties
Of Pentecostal Sunday mornings
 Of no fatalities or pathologies. 
Tell the story… 
Of why Kaepernick knelt 
Of why Trayvon Martin
Philando Castile
Eric Garner, George Floyd, Laquan McDonald & Tyre Nichols
Were dealt 
The penalty of death
At racism’s hand
Denied due process 
In Freedom’s Land
Where liberty still remains elusive
And Discrimination’s Plan 
to suppress, dispossess and disenfranchise 
The Black Man
And wearing black face and hooded white robes of the Ku Klux Klan 
Are still at hand
Still…
More than 400 years after black slaves 
Arrived in Jamestown in the year 1619
Still facing 
These same old systemic issues in the year 2019 and beyond
And yet, still we rise.

Tell The Story... 
Of the history of Bronzeville 
Where Ida B. Wells
Richard Wright 
Gwendolyn Brooks 
Louis Armstrong
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams and others
Once lived
Bronzeville Chicago
 that in its heyday
Rivaled Harlem 
as the cultural & political 
Place to be
Bedrock
Of jazz, blues and soul musicality
Bronzeville 
flowing
With deep rivers of history
Glistening jewel 
Of Possibility
Tell the story

Tell the story...
Of Chicago’s West Side 
Where I was born and bred
Where Dr. King once lived
And Fred Hampton & The Black Panthers 
Fed 
poor children’s bellies
That we might fill our heads 
with knowledge & freedom’s dream
So that we might truly one day sing:
“Free at last” 
“Free at last” 

Tell the story...
All of our stories 
Across the Black Diaspora 
From Chicago to beyond
From Englewood and Roseland 
To West Garfield and K-Town
From Accra, Ghana 
to South Africa’s Cape Town
From Chi's "Wild Hunneds" 
And back down
Without dissimulation
Without esteeming one above the other
For each story forms the collective tapestry 
Of our history 
As sisters and brothers
A glorious, incomparable and triumphant story 
A story like no other
Tell
Your 
Own 
Story
Tell the story…

Email: Author@johnwfountain.com

John Fountain captures the faces of children he visited at an orphanage in Ghana, where he was a 2021-22 Fulbright Scholar.