Celebration of Freedom

by: Claris E. Smith

Naked I came upon this land

Bearing chains of another man. 

Stripped from the warmth

Of my mother’s bosom

In Kush cradles of civilization

Shackled in a ship through the Transatlantic

Sold on the stocks of the plantation.

I was brought to this place

That was not yet a nation.

And I was told that slave was my only station

Beneath a man, below a beast,

 A cruel convenience for a system that needed me.

So, I worked the land, I sowed the soil,

I built the cities. I toiled and toiled.

My blood and my sweat brought this nation to be

The home of the brave and the land of the free

But that freedom somehow excluded me

For over four centuries.

So I fought and I struggled for four hundred years

Generations and generations of blood sweat and tears.

I have never stopped struggling to this day

And I know the price that my struggles have paid

So when I celebrate the land of the free

I take it to be a celebration of me

The one who caused this great nation to be.

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