“yeah jesus went/ down to the old/ rugged cross-/ road to dance
between/ two worlds/ his holy body breaking/ to the beat of a music/
loud enough to shake awake/ the black saints of old”
“Breaking between Two Worlds (Jesus at the Crossroads)”
from Cinders Rekindled by Charlie Braxton
The Bridge (For Medgar at the Crossroads)
A purple and gold brave
always pounding the medicine drum
to deliver healing justice to sick magnolias—
Medgar sold the policy of voter registration
to insure healthy citizenship
for in the year that Emmett was drowned
Medgar was baptized in the waters
of Civil Rights warfare becoming an
intellectual warrior in Mau Mau Fashion.
He was a revolutionary farmer
plowing the fields, removing the weeds of injustice
and harvesting crops of freedom fruit from
which some were scared to take communion.
Yet, Medgar was unafraid to be hugged by people
with callous-coated hands and clean hearts
while he was crucified by those
with muddy hearts and bleached hands,
allowing his body to become a fortified viaduct
connecting the warring alphabets of
NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, COFO, and CORE
into a vocabulary of liberation letters
determined to spell democracy.
Often hated by a hierarchy
that played hopscotch for Hoover,
he seldom tapped in time to
Roy Wilkins’ self-hating square-dance.
Pulled like Play-Doh in polarizing directions,
Medgar was the caulk that filled
the cracks in the movement.
For, he was sculpted from the
same clay as Jeremiah and Daniel,
and three years before the waterfall flowing
of Yankee bus riders he became a prophet
on a Meridian bus making the soil
fertile for Freedom Riders to flower.
With the fire of the Old Testament prophets
and tears raining like revolution,
Medgar became the pied piper of truth
and a trumpet sounding the stories
of Clyde Kennard and Mack Parker—
his words cutting the strings from the backs
the Negro leaders who were puppets
to the Sovereignty Commission
often frozen in their fear because
lynching was more popular than baseball
and Mississippi loved to “past time”
with double-lynchings that had more fans than double-hitters
and more season ticket holders than the Oxford Rebels
often selling postcards of perverted picnics
populated by flesh-eating villagers.
Yet, Medgar churned the fire of his rage
into a locomotive for equality,
becoming a people’s poet—
his words were the flame
of justice smoldering in their souls.
And like Yeshua levitating Lazarus,
he barnstormed and two-stepped with the Ladner duo
to create a tidal wave of support for the Tougaloo Nine.
This trifecta of truth-telling became a tornado
stirring up the Jackson State seeds,
transforming them from dead bones to living spirits
willing to haunt Jackson for justice proving that
courage is the yeast that a people need to rise
and that Medgar was the best chef for the job.
Constantly breakdancing on the battlefield
to the beat of “We Shall not Be Moved,”
Medgar was the glue of the crossroads
becoming a carpenter who could take
three nails and leftover wood
and build a house to hold
“all the adams and all the eves”
in one big tabernacle of humanity:
the café campers and the congregation wailers,
the North End survivors
and the Shady Oaks Highsiders,
the gun-toting Lynch Streeters
and the pulpit-pimping preachers,
the hell raisers and Bible bathers
the fractured fraternal orders
and the blessed praying peacemakers
the tyrannical turncoat teachers
and sharpened Azande students
the easy-greasy pinstriped city slickers
and the overall wearing cotton pickers
the greenback chasers and the overly zealous baby makers.
Medgar made sure that the doors of the church to freedom
were open to all and that any soul that had need
could answer the phone of the liberation altar call.
So, now’s the time to build a tabernacle
to testify to the truth of “how we got over”
that will turn this decaying corpse of a city
into a timberland of triumphant trees.
And no longer will the shadow of spineless
Eunuchs unable to give birth to our exodus
keep us entombed in Mr. Charlie’s cave with a
college-certified handkerchief-head guarding the door.
So, I’m finally shaking off the fur coat of fear
and the concrete shoes of selfishness
to walk across the bridge to liberty
built by a man of steel and
maintained by our own wonder woman.
..