" Moses in the Promised Land "
If they try to kill you, develop a willingness to die.
--Martin Luther King Jr
Moses stood on the mountain
and looked into the promised land –
hickory forests, cotton fields,
Spanish moss, magnolias,
cotton, hay and bayous.
Shanties, catfish shacks,
dirt roads, clapboard churches,
courthouse squares and the county farm.
No columns of fire or smoke guided him
through the Mississippi deltas,
only examples from the Mahatma.
No plagues of frogs from the heavens
tormented sheriff, mayor or governor,
only a law, flawed, unenforced.
The sun did not stand still, walls fall.
Trumpets did not sound, only song,
batons and keys turning in a cell door.
Instead of manna, he was given blood –
Herbert Lee, Louis Allen, Vernon Dahmer,
Andrew Goodman, James Chaney,
Michael Schwerner, James Travis,
his own and many more –
until it seemed he would wander
for forty years times forty
before the whips ceased their work.
Robert Moses crossed over the river
to carry the promise home.
*
arrested McComb, MI, Liberty and Greenwood; Amite, Pike and Holmes Counties, Ruleville in Sunflower County, AL interference with an officer, disruption of the police, being there, photography of a bombed house, distribution of literature, being a Negro
beaten and bit Liberty, McComb, Greenwood
fired upon Greenwood
Footnote: Miraculously, Robert Moses survived his years leading voter registration drives in Southwest Mississippi. When I finished the main chapter on his work in Branch Taylor’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, I checked the internet expecting the worse – “Robert Morse: Born 1935, died 1964 shot in McComb, MI.” or worse “…disappeared in Amite County, MI, his body never found.” He now teaches algebra.
© 2003 Gary Blankenship
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