This image is of Peggy (R), then a 19 year-old SNCC member, next to future civil rights icon, Dr. Dorothy Cotton (L), after a 1962 church burning in Georgia—the state that Peggy's great-great grandparents, William & Ellen Craft, famously escaped from slavery nearly 115 years earlier...
Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
Dr. Dorothy Cotton
MY
W E E K L Y
W O R D
1.18.21
On this special day, I want to recognize the legacy of a man that I had the honor of meeting when I was in SNCC—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I would not only see him at joint SNCC/SCLC meetings in Georgia (an organizational relationship forged by Ella Baker), but he brought toiletries to all of us in jail after being arrested for protesting in Albany, GA. And it is in his memory I dedicate this week's poem, Bridge, that absolutely addresses the faux calls for unity by Congressional apologists, who helped to stoke the insurrectionists. The poem also celebrates the magnitude of an inauguration with a white male president-elect, who is not only NOT afraid of a woman as his Vice President, but fully embraces that she is a Black/South Asian woman... So, yes, Dr. King, your dream continues to be realized, in spite of the continued efforts to stop it...
B R I D G E
by Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
Spare us the dusty excuses...
Please!
We will not
Go backwards.
​
It is not without regret
That we must move you on
Assure that you leave
So that light
Will seep into us once again
We will not apologize for
HOPE.
Nothing will cease our celebration
It is ours to look forward to
Even as Winter
Still in our midst
Yet allows us to once again
View a new birth of Spring.
We must move now as a bridge
not a tunnel
Be on the brink of reaching across
Gathering even all of us
To celebrate
POSSIBILITIES!
© 2020 Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely. All rights reserved.