“Kids Who Die” (1938) is a poem written by Langston Hughes – long before Michael Brown, even before Emmett Till.
In 2015, Frank Chi and Terrance Green shortened the poem a bit and created a video of it where actor Danny Glover speaks the words, set to images mostly from the past few years. The video is embedded above (and linked to below). If you get the references made by the images (see the links below) and understand that the words were written 77 years ago, it is utterly heartbreaking.
Here are the words of the poem (the words in italics were left out of the video):
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get togetherListen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.
See also:
- YouTube: Kids Who Die
- In the order referenced in the three-minute video:
- 0:14 Trayvon Martin – the Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea in the grass on a rainy night
- 0:24 Tamir Rice – the snow-covered park
- 0:42 Emmett Till – the boy pictured in the old copy of Jet magazine
- 0:47 Oscar Grant – the Fruitvale Station sign and the party hat
- 0:57 Sandra Bland – the woman talking in the mobile phone video
- 1:03 Aiyana Jones – “daddy’s girl”
- 1:08 Michael Brown – “hands up, don’t shoot”
- 1:27 Bob McCulloch – “sleazy courts”. McCulloch is shown in a black-and-white video. He was the public prosecutor in the Michael Brown case.
- 1:35 Fox News – “the money-loving preachers”
- 1:37 DOJ report on the Ferguson police – the Ferguson police department badge
- 1:43 Eric Garner – the man being pushed down by police
- 1:45 Freddie Gray – the man whose legs do not seem to work, being raised up by police
- 1:46 Walter Scott – the man running from police, being shot in the back
- 1:50 Ferguson and Ferguson II – the protesters
- 2:06 Aiyana Jones again
- 2:07 Renisha McBride – the woman on the funeral programme
- 2:10 Charleston Massacre – the “Charleston United” sign
- 2:12 The extremely incomplete list of unarmed Blacks killed by police – the list of names
- 2:15 Black Spring – the Black Lives Matter protests
- 2:19 Oscar Grant – again, on a wall painting
- 2:22 Michael Brown– again, on a wall painting
- 2:24 ??? – a candle being raised to a wall.
- Langston Hughes: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
- Phantom Caucasian Justice
Thank you.
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I received this in my email from Change.Org and it was so poignant and tragic and it addresses the tragedy of death of young black people today. It has been a whole year since Michael Brown was murdered. I am learning that it’s been 77 years since Langston Huges wrote this chilling poem. Sadly, nothing has changed and the struggle for black people in America still continues, black lives didn’t matter then to racist white supremacist America then and in 2015 with a black man in the highest office in the land, they still don’t matter in the divided states of America. Thanks Abagond for posting this poem. I watched the Youtube with Danny Glover reciting the poem and all the photo footage from the black lives matter movement. #Black Lives Matter
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Hey, I get emails from Change.org too!
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Abagond, who the HAYELL are you??!! This cuts so deep, so close to the bone…
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The more things change the more they stay the same.
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oh yeah..its time to get angry…. @ > : o O ) >
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@ Emma Flesser: Comment deleted for use of moderated language.
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This video is absolutely wonderful and powerful. Thanks for blogging about it.
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@Abagond. Sorry about the “w” word.
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it’s sick because the police state hurts poor white Americans too, just like the country’s economic policies hurt them.
the reason these people vote the way they do and excuse the policies and treatment the excuse is because they would rather see minorities suffer than to enact any policy that would help both them and minorities.
there’s no other “there” there.
you can talk with HBDers about what the stats they are invoking actually mean, but they are either incapable of understanding or do not want to understand — maybe a little of both.
you can talk with libertardians about the factual circumstances that will arise from their supposed ideals, but they just want to keep talking about their religion.
etc. etc. these philosophies are just rationalizations of the referred to animus.
a good government isn’t capitalist, socialist, etc. or whatever. a good government is one that meets the needs of its people. all its people. everything else is ideology. and in the U.S. most of that ideology is racism.
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@ swank:
“a good government isn’t capitalist, socialist, etc. or whatever. a good government is one that meets the needs of its people. all its people. everything else is ideology. and in the U.S. most of that ideology is racism.”
That must be one of the best insights I have read in a while.
Thank you.
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[…] Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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..Wow, I am just blown away at this epic poem by Langston-especially seeing the footage with all the (incomplete lists) of Black lives that have been needlessly taken, although the piece mentions white lives tragically lost too-in my estimation it cannot compare on even half the same level to the amount of life loss of Black/POC..
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Reblogged this on buildingsnbridges.
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Shouldn’t that be the words not in italics were left out of the video?
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[…] “Kids Who Die” (1938) is a poem written by Langston Hughes – long before Michael Brown, even before Emmett Till. In 2015, Frank Chi and Terrance Green shortened the poem a bit and created a video of it where actor Danny Glover speaks the words, set to images mostly from the past few years. The video is embedded above (and linked to below). If you get the references made by the images (see the links below) and understand that the words were written 77 years ago, it is utterly heartbreaking. […]
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Reblogged this on GetRealWithDarylandDeVon@.Wordpress.Com.
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