Jourdan Blair

It wasn’t from a mountain top that she sewed together the fabric of this country. ‘Twas from the subterranean levels of the dark soil from where they said she came. Lowly depths, beneath the wild grasses of plantations where ghosts of the egregious past play. Beneath contagious hatred. Beneath injustices glimmering bright across the land manifested from seashore to shining seashore.

Beneath the gravity of oppression in its fullest form; bred, nurtured, weaponized. It was beneath the darkness of hopeless nights in foreign beds with foreign men, in capable of self-protection - No say in the matter no matter what she’d say. No matter what she do, beneath the disenfranchising legalese, suppressing the will and the way that she inevitably found.

Yes, it is. ‘Twas always sure to be. The dark soil the richest, the part from where she came. She came to know the truth as she listened to her sisters beneath the limit of melanin’s boundary. She came to know power by rising against the crippling agents reserved only for the least valued. She came to know light, guided by a star’s fervent beckoning burn. She came to know her worth, her purpose, her impact, her desires, her irrevocable human and civil rights, her voice, her dignity, her equality, her pride.

It was through her suffering, that she came to know [her] self. Still, ascending to her proper place atop the mountain, this time, with what they cannot take away. I’ll see her on voting day.