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...
MY
W E E K L Y
W O R D
H A P P Y N E W Y E A R!!!
1.1.2022
Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
Dr. Dorothy Cotton
I know it has been a minute since I have posted, but I'm glad to be back on this first day of 2022, which also happens to be the 159th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation—issued 15 years after my own great-great grandparents, William & Ellen Craft, had escaped enslavement. In honor of them and the Proclamation, please see my poem below: "The Language of Liberation"...
(NOTE: Please know that in the coming weeks, I will post a few "Fall/Winter 2021 Milestones" that occurred between mid-September & December 2021.)
"T H E L A N G U A G E O F L I B E R A T I O N"
​​by Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
It is verb, it is noun
It is adverb, it is adjective
It is exclamation, it is interjection.
It is annoying doubt, it is ferocious hope.
It is motion, it is hesitation.
It never assumes victory,
It always recognizes struggle.
Liberation language is a living breathing dynamic.
It is balance and thrust.
It is silence. It is scream.
It is disappointment. It is HALLELUJAH!
It is reconciliation. It is renewal.
It carries history in its pocket, and
Spirit in its mouth.
It is individual. It is community.
It is failure. It is promise.
It is the arc of the glory.
It is the cellar of defeat.
Liberation belongs.
It inspires. It sings.
It is alive.
It is ours.
© 2021 Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely. All rights reserved.