Wikipedia Poem, No. 643

“What they did want to hear was what the War Department was doing to put into practice the democracy preached by the administration. ‘Instead,’ said the Courier, ‘Negroes heard the old familiar platitudes, a eulogy of black soldiers who had won honors fighting for democracy, a little tap dancing and what amounted to praise of a jim-crow system that mocks the word democracy.” Roi Ottley, November 1941

       of a person
     of a provision
    an interview 
with laura ingraham 
on slavery    

this statement that provision          what a paragraph      
in our   constitutional          fact     quiet       chief of the man     
clearly   state       what you know    the x of the matter
that     provision is known          in fact     
that chief is quite able to reach    three-fifths of a man    
that        would bleach           his constitution 
in our great american i    con 
returned to   ignorance at the first fugitive slave       african-american-american-american-american-american-american-american-american-american 
rights of 1854     which sad compromise was that       chief
their      major   choice think about     choice kansas nebraska missouri whoever       
cast out of balance on whether black slavery     slaves were         truly people or not 
would residents balance     their interest against an interest-bearing heat or heart 
on slavery     slaves     slave    esclave    chattel    trash     one man    one woman
which fugitive       rights       movement   their value allowed terminology 
in          black       bodied neighborhoods    of the night
compared with      property deeds        covenant on two knees     
which allowed homeowners to place     the black people’s spark      in escrow 
what is a right      new fights movement for a movement 
the prewar      comparison        with the value of legacy 
black neighborhoods     fleeting on black bodies

Sources:

Cauley, Kashana. “Slavery Thrived on Compromise, John Kelly.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 Oct. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/opinion/slavery-kelly-civil-war-compromise.html.

Ottley, Roi. “Negro Morale: 1941.” Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963-1973. New York: Library of America, 2003. Print. 5-10.