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SPEAKER: I open my mouth to the Lord and I. Won't turn back no. I will go. I shall go to see what the end is going to be. She does not know her beauty. She thinks her brown body has no glory.

If she could dance naked under palm trees and see her image in the river, she would know. But there are no palm trees on the street and dishwater gives back no images.

Still I open my mouth to the Lord and I won't turn back no. A lady I know. She thinks that up in heaven her class lies late and snores while black cherubs rise at 7:00 to do celestial chores.

Still I open my mouth to the Lord and I won't turn back no. Once riding in old Baltimore, head filled, heart filled with glee. I saw a Baltimorean keep looking straight at me.

Now I was 8 and very small. And he was no whit bigger. And so I smiled. That's right. But he stuck out his tongue and called me nigger. I saw the whole of Baltimore from May until December of all the things that happened there.

That's all that I remember. Still I open my mouth to the Lord and I won't turn back. No, I will go. I shall go to see what the end is going to be. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

All right.

[APPLAUSE]

Well, I surely appreciate it. I really do. I appreciate your invitation. I appreciate your celebration of Dr. King. I appreciate your intelligence and perspicacity and in-depth insightfulness and just plain good taste to invite. Wait now. Wait now. Wait now.

[APPLAUSE]

ITO have the Reginald Bruckner group. I mean, you all are hot. Now that you have finally invited me, I hope you brought everything you need, because I intend to take the next four or five or six hours to talk to you about the quality of love.

That's what Martin Luther King was about. Love, not mush. Not sentimentality. Not the desire to possess or the obsession to be possessed. But love. Love is that incredible entity, quality, condition in the human spirit which encourages us to develop courage, and then to trust that courage to build bridges.

And then to trust those bridges crossing over in attempts to reach other human beings and make their lives better. That is courage. It is said, it is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.

You can't be consistently kind or fair or generous or loving or merciful or honest. I wish I had said that first, actually. Aristotle said it first. But I don't care. It is still true. And he has no agents around.

When I look at love and I think of where we are and I think of how far we have been brought, our spiritual says I look back and wonder at how I got over. When I look back and see who we are and how we are and how we have come to this place, I know that we have been paid for.

Every human being, every person in this auditorium and in all auditorium and outside of them have been paid for, whether their ancestors came from Ireland in 1849 trying to escape the potato blight, or whether they came from Asia in the 1840s and '50s to build the railroad, unable to bring their spouses legally for 80 years.

Whether they came from Scandinavia from a mean land to a mean land. Whether they came from Africa, lying spoon fashion in the filthy hatches of slave ships. They have paid for us all.

Somehow they survived without knowing or having any idea what we would look like, what our faces would look like, how we would look when we smiled, whose eyes we took, whose teeth. They paid for us by surviving. And I think really, it is up to us to look at the people in our own communities, in our own families first to try to find some heroes and sheroes.

[APPLAUSE]

I believe that young men and women today are being led down dangerous, druggy primrose paths because they are being offered men and women, young men and women who are no deeper in many cases than the page of the sensational newspaper on which they are reported no more lasting than the video tape on which they do their sensual and sometimes suggestive music as heroes and sheroes.

In truth, if we stop a minute, each of us has a hero-shero. In the family, it is wonderful when we have a Dr. Martin Luther King. It is magnificent when we have a William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass to look at, a Fannie Lou Hamer to look at, and Edna Saint Vincent Millay to look at, and Eleanor Roosevelt to look at and Pearl Buck. It is wonderful.

But in our own families, young men and women, we can find somebody who said I will go, shall go to see what the end is going to be. You all know that Black people for centuries in this country were obliged to laugh when they weren't tickled and to scratch when they didn't itch.

And those gestures have come down to us as Uncle Tommy and Aunt Jemima-ing. I suggest that those people were successful in the employment of those humiliating ploys, or I won't speak for you. I know I wouldn't be here to even talk about them.

[APPLAUSE]

Now I think we don't often enough stop to say thank you. Thank you. I surely appreciate it. Thank you. Because we don't stop to think how that Black man's throat must have been closing on him. You know how it will-- your throat will start to ache. These muscles will ache when you're trying not to cry. But the body tenses up.

Each time that Black man had to say, yes, sir, boss, you sure must be right. I sure must be stupid. Yes, sir. So he could make enough money so he could go home and feed somebody, or that Black woman who said no, ma'am, Mrs. Ann, you didn't hurt me when you slapped me. I ain't telling the hardest. Sure ain't.

So she could go home and send somebody to Fisk and Spelman and Tuskegee and Howard. Yes, sir. Maurice Brown. So I wrote a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City. She's a maid.

When she sits down, she sits at the back of the bus. She has two shopping bags. If the bus stops abruptly, she says [LAUGHS]. If it stops slowly, she sits up [LAUGHS] If it misses somebody [LAUGHS]. If it picks up somebody [LAUGHS].

I watched that woman for nine months. I thought ma'am, If you don't Black features, you may think she's laughing. She wasn't laughing. She was simply extending her lips and making a sound. [LAUGHS]

I thought, oh, I see. That's that survival apparatus. That's the gift she gave. And my grandmothers and grandfathers and great grandfathers and great grandfathers gave to me so that I could stand erect. OK, Thank you. So I wrote a poem for her.

I use it with Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, Masks, and my own poem for old Black men. He rose. She rose. When I think about myself, I almost laughed myself to death [LAUGHS]

My life has been one great big joke. A dance that's walked. A song was spoke. [LAUGHS] I laughed so hard. I nearly choke when I think about myself. 70 years in these folks' world.

The child I works for calls me girl. I say, yes, ma'am. For work and sake. I'm too proud to bend and too poor to break. So [LAUGHS] I laugh until my stomach ache when I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side. [LAUGHS] I laughed so hard I nearly died. The tales they tell sound just like line. They grow the fruit but eat the rind. I laugh [LAUGHS] until I start to cry when I think about my folks and the little children.

But then we wear the mask that grins and lies. It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes. And this debt we pay to human guile. With torn and bleeding hearts, we smile and mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise in counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us while we wear the mask. We smile. But, Oh, my god. Our tears to thee from tortured souls arise and we sing.

Hey, baby, don't you do your-- [SCATTING]. The clay is vile beneath our feet and long the mile. [LAUGHS] Let the world think otherwise. We wear the mask. [LAUGHS]

My father sit on benches. Their flesh count every plank. The slats leave dents of darkness deep in their withered flank. And they nod like broken candles all waxed and burnt profound. They say, but sugar. It was our submission. And that made your world go round.

There, in those pleated faces, I see the auction block. The chains and slavery scuffles the whip and lash and stock. My father speak in voices that shred my fact and sound. They say, but baby, it was our submission, honey. And that made your world go round.

They laughed to shield their crying. They shuffled through their dreams. They step and fetch a country and wrote the blues in screams. I understand their meaning. It could and did derive from living on the ledge of death. They kept my race alive by wearing the mask. [LAUGHS]

[APPLAUSE]

We have been loved. Any time any human being is willing to allow herself or himself to be seen at his most base thinking that by doing so, he can ensure the survival of yet another human being, that is a demonstration of love. How be it brutal. How be it brooding. How be it painful. That is love.

Now to look at romantic love. So I have to lift you all up a little bit. Yes, because to look at romantic love, I have to remind you that it's sad. But when a number of non-Blacks write about Black people and romantic love because they are so erroneously informed, they would have us believe because they do believe that White people make love and Black people just have sex.

But what you have to do is to go to the literature. Go to the literature, the Black American literature, 18th, 19th, and 20th century. Listen, this is a shred from a 19th century folk song in which a Black man spoke of the woman he loved. He said, the woman I love is fat and chocolate to the bone. And every time she shakes, some skinny woman loses her home.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

19th century folk song again in which a Black woman speaks of the man she loves. This shred of the folk song found its way into Mr. W.C Handy's 20th century Blues. The Black lady sang, he's blacker than midnight. Teeth like flags of truth. He's the finest thing in the whole Saint Louis. They say the blacker the berry, sweeter is the juice. Now, that's poetry.

[APPLAUSE]

And that's love poetry.

[APPLAUSE]

Romantic love poetry. There's a poem by Mrs. Georgia Douglas Johnson, 19th century Black lady poet. Mrs. Johnson wrote, I want to die while you love me. While yet you hold me fair. While laughter lies upon my lips and lights are in my hair. Yes.

I want to die while you love me. Who would care to live to love had nothing more to ask and nothing more to give. No, I want to die while you love me. And bare to that still bared your kisses. Turbulent, unspent to warm me while I'm dead. Romantic love. Romantic love. Wait, just one more.

James Weldon Johnson. Mr. Johnson wrote 1910. The glory of the day was in her face. The beauty of the night was in her eyes. And over all her loveliness, the grace of morning blushing in the early skies.

And in her voice, the calling of the dove like music of a sweet, melodious part. And in her smile, the breaking light of love and all the gentle virtues in her heart. And it seemed like to me that everything is wrong.

Seemed like to me the birds done lost their song. Seemed like to me the days are just twice has long since she went away. Seemed like to me I just can't help but sigh. Seemed like to me my throat keeps getting dry. Seemed like to me a tear stay in my eyes since she went away.

Now that glorious day, that beauteous night, the birds that signaled to their mates at dawn to my dull ears, to my grief blinded sight. They're all one with the dead since she has gone. You see the glory of the day was in her face. In her face. In her face. That's James Weldon Johnson.

[APPLAUSE]

I'm coming to talk to you about love, because Martin Luther King was really seriously a person who spoke of lived and died for love. Not mush, not sentimentality, not sensationalism, but true love.

A person who didn't ask, am I my brother's keeper? But really knew that he was his brother and his sister. And it takes a lot of courage to know that. I mean, it's so simple. It's so obvious, it seems to me.

But somehow we can fool ourselves into believing I can live separate from you. Now you see, if I get a bigger job than you, if I get 2 and 1/2 cars and 2 and 1/2 children and get that garage out there in the country and everything, and then I can live separate from you. And if you die, nothing of me dies.

It's wrong, you know. It is wrong. John Donne said in the 16th century, the death of every human being diminishes me. And it wasn't wise to ask for whom the bell tolled. And at that time in Europe, whenever anyone would die in a village, the church bell, the cathedral bell would toll and people would stick their heads out of the windows and say, who died?

He said, ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. Well now to reach that condition of love takes a lot of courage. And yet it is so simple. It is a matter of making one decision, one.

Once the decision is made, oh, you can go back on the decision, but you can never be the same again because always you know you have gone back up on your decision because the decision is made to you, between you and yourself, you and God, you and Allah, you and Yahweh, you and Jehovah, you and Buddha, you and your best friend.

It is a decision which you can no longer ever rescind. You can not discharge it, but you will know. And the decision is to say to one's own self, I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.

Incredible statement. homo sum. And when-- it was made by Terence. And when you look up Terence in the encyclopedia, you will see beside his name with one R, Terence, these words in italics, Terentius Afer. He was an African, a slave, sold to a Roman senator. Freed by that senator.

He became the most popular playwright in Rome. Six of his plays and that statement have come down to us from 154 BC. This man not born White, not born free, or with any chance of ever achieving citizenship, said, I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.

Now if you make that decision, it is a serious one. It means that if someone takes a mack truck, runs over babies in the street, commits the most heinous crime, you can never again say, oh, I could never do that. Not if a human being did it.

Now if an alligator or maybe an elephant or yes, but not if a human. You must say when you see that act, I mean never to do it. I intend to use my energies constructively as opposed to destructively.

But if a human being did it, I have within myself all the components to do that thing. And let me not separate myself from the human being or pretend to separate myself. If you do that for the negative, on the other hand, here's what you get.

If a human being paints a great painting, a Picasso, a Matisse, a Romare Bearden, a Jacob Lawrence paints a great- Elizabeth Catlett, Mary Cassatt that just seems to reach under your rib cage and lift you up, it means you have within you the possibility of doing that thing.

If a human being writes a great piece of music, great. And Mozart. If Stevie Wonder, a John Lewis, a Ray Charles, a Verdi. If a human being writes it, you have within you-- if a human being dares to love somebody and has the unmitigated gall to accept love in return, it means you can do it. That's what it means. That's hot.

[APPLAUSE]

Now I know that's liberating. Let me tell you all about self-love. Yes, One of the concerns I have during the week of celebrating Dr. King's birthday is that quite often, the speakers make Dr. King larger than life, and take him out of the possibility of accessibility to the children.

The young people must think, well, I mean, goodness, gracious. I did read where a kid in Charlotte, in my state, a kid was asked who was Martin Luther King. A person who was about eight years old.

He said Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves for some time I was the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He had invited me.

And one night we were coming back from a fundraiser because Northern coordinator Memphis really meant I raised money in the North. I mean, it wasn't. It was just a name.

But we were coming back and he told this story to be true. He said that a Black woman had worked for a White woman some 50 years. Both of them, of course, were older than Black pepper, thyme, noon, and everything else.

And the Black lady no longer was able to actually work, but she would come in and the White lady would greet her and that. And one day the Black lady came in. White lady was having friends over for coffee.

And she called the Black lady from the kitchen, where she by this time had a maid who did all the real work. And so the Black lady came in and greeted the White lady and her friends. The White lady said, asked, she said, Bessie, I just want to know something. I hope you are not supporting that bus boycott. You've been with me so long. I'd hate to think that you would take that rebellious attitude.

And the Black lady said oh, no, ma'am, not me. I don't. I'm not supporting that bus boycott at all. No, ma'am. She said, you know, my son, he works over there for the power company across town from where we live. I told my son, I said, you don't have nothing to do with that bus boycott. You walk every step of the way to your job.

[APPLAUSE]

She said, and my grandchildren, they're going to school over there in that junior high school on the other side. I told them, I said, you ignore that bus boycott. You just walk. She said, and me, if nobody from my church picked me up to come over here. Well, no, ma'am, I just say I won't have nothing to do with that bus boycott. I'm going to walk to work. I sure am.

[APPLAUSE]

So when the Black lady got back in the kitchen, the White lady's daughter, who was grown, said to her, why do you indulge my mother like that? Why don't you just come out and tell her what's happening in the world?

And the Black lady said, honey, listen, let me tell you something. When you have your head in a lion's mouth, you don't snatch it out. You just reach up and just start to scratching it gently behind the ears and you draw your head out gradually.

[APPLAUSE]

I think it is important that we remember that the men and women who have made a difference for us, who are our heroes and sheroes, were human beings. It is important for us to remember that so that we can offer them to the children as uncles and aunties and grand uncles and grand aunties.

Whether they are Fannie Lou Hamer, the Kennedy brothers, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, our Harriet Tubman. It doesn't matter. Let us see them as human. For they were, and quite often full of humor.

I write a lot of self-love poetry. I don't think I've-- Well, I've only done one of my poems. But I told you, I hope you brought everything you need. So it's all right. I will get to something.

I have written a self-love poem. Now because I don't-- I never trust anybody who doesn't love himself who tells me I love you. Something wrong. Something wrong. There's an African saying, which is be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

[LAUGHTER]

So I tried a lot of self-love. So here's a self-love poem, Black Woman's poem, working class Black woman. She says some Dixie folks. Now Dixie, Dixie is-- I know you all are way up here North. And so many of you went.

But Dixie is a Southern Black word, meaning "hankdy." And "hankdy" is kind of sadity. Well, but sadity, the only way to translate it is it's kind of snob-- it's snobbish, but it's more than that. But you'll understand the person.

Some Dixie folks don't know the facts. Posing and preening and putting on acts. Stretching their necks and straining their backs. They move into condos up over the ranks, lend their souls to the local banks, buy big cars they can't afford, then ride around town acting bored.

My job at the plant ain't the biggest bet, but I pay my bills and stay out of debt. I get my hair done for my own self sake. So I don't have to pick and I don't have to rake. I take the church money out and then I head across town to my friend girl's house where we plan our round.

We meet our men and go to a joint where the music is Blues and to the point. Folks talk about me. They just can't see how I work all week at the factory. Then get spruced up and laugh and dance and turn away from worry with a sassy glance.

They accuse me of living from day to day. Who are they kidding? So are they. My life ain't heaven, but it sure ain't hell. I'm not on top. But I call it swell if I'm able to work and get paid right and have the luck to be Black on a Saturday night.

[APPLAUSE]

Self-love. You know, I just have to go on a little while longer. Just it. Well, it's a number of sociologists and anthropologists and a group I like to call hysteriologists would have us believe that because there are some people who believe themselves and act upon their own publicity or propaganda that the Black men don't love their children. That is a lie.

It is a lie. And we have to remind ourselves, women, we have to remind our men. Men have to remind themselves. We have to remind the children. We have to remind the people in the larger society that, that is not so.

Listen to this poem of Paul Laurence Dunbar if you please. 1892. Little Brown baby with sparkling eyes. Come to your papa and sit on his knee. What you've been doing, sir. Making sand pies.

Look at that bib. You as dirty as me. Look at those hands. That's molasses, I bet. Come here, Miranda. Clean off his hands. Boy, the bees are going to get you and eat you up yet being so sticky and sweet. Goodness, Lance.

Little brown baby with sparkling eyes. Whose papa's darling. Whose papa's child. Who is it never once tries to be cross or never tries to lose that smile. Where did you get those teeth? Boy, you a scamp.

Where did the dimples come from in your chin? Papa don't know you. I believe you. Some tramp. Mama, here comes some old straggler trying to get in. Let's just throw him out the door in the sand. We don't want no stragglers hanging around here.

Now let's give him away to the big boogeyman. I know he's hanging around here somewhere. Boogeyman, boogeyman, come in the door. Here's a little boy you can have for to eat. Mama and papa don't want him no more. Just gobble him up from his head to his feet. I knew that would make you hug me up close.

You go away, oh, booger. You shouldn't have this boy. He ain't no straggler, no stranger. Of course, he's papa's darling and playmate and joy. Come to your palate, honey, and go to your rest. I wish you could always know ease and clear skies. I wish you could stay just a baby at my breast. You little brown baby with sparkling eyes.

[APPLAUSE]

Well, now I have a sister friend, White woman. We have been sister friends for 30 years. We were young together, poor, and crazy, which if you're young and that would follow that you would be.

She's from Chicago. And I was from a town in Arkansas about as large as the clearing on the stage from here to that corn. But we were so funny in San Francisco in our 20s. We said, hello darling.

It was just outrageous. She has a daughter and I have a son. And her daughter had, I think, the softest teeth west of the Rockies because every three or four months, her daughter would have a cavity. She would borrow money from me. And we would have the cavity done, or my son wore glasses. Still does.

And it seemed like the kids worked it out. On the months when her daughter didn't have the cavity, my son would lose his glasses. So I have to take money from her to get glasses from her. We looked for our individual Mr. Rights at the same time.

And when either of us found a Mr. Right, the other one would buy cheap red wine. We'd sit up all night saying, darling, here's to you and yours. And when either of us lost Mr. Right, the other one would buy even cheaper wine. And we'd sit up all night talking about girl, he was beneath you.

[APPLAUSE]

We paid for our sisterhood. We are still sister friends some 30 odd years later. And she went to-- she is now chairman of the Department of Anthropology in New York. We somehow managed to grow up or pretend to.

And she called me a couple of years ago and asked me to please-- why didn't I come to a conference in the Caribbean? She said everything was great. She described it. She said the best of everything was a speech by Elaine Thomas.

So I said, I don't know her. She said, yes, you do. We met her on Long Island in the '50s. You know her. So I ask her describe her. She says she's short, stocky, about our age, which is the French say is a certain age. So I ask her, is she Black or White? She says she's Black. I ask her, what color is she? She says

[LAUGHTER]

Now, I don't know how many anthropologists you know, but my friend has this great voice. And like most anthropologists, she talks all the time. And has case histories to back up everything she has to say.

But over the phone came this which is kind. And I realized after 30 years of sisterhood, of arguing the town down, supporting each other in terrible crises, loving and laughing together and growing together, if my life or hers depended upon it, she couldn't describe me. Safe to say that I was Black.

Now you all know that Black people range in color from plum blue to milk white. Now, why that is, you'll have to invite me again to explain.

[APPLAUSE]

That's to me. But here's a poem of Langston Hughes. Now we range since we have such variety that for centuries, we have called ourselves bouquets of roses, gardens of flowers. And in my town, in North Carolina, the old ladies still say that. And the old men, when you come out of church, they say everybody looks like a bouquet of roses. It's true.

So I'm going to use, recite this Langston Hughes poem with the hope that the Black young men and women who live so far north of the Mason and Dixon land would be reminded of some of the phrases we have used to describe ourselves and our beautiful colors, and put these phrases back in currency.

And I would suggest to the White brothers and sisters in the audience to memorize some of these phrases. So when next you want to describe a Black friend or possibly someone in your family, you will use one of these phrases. And if you have no Black friends, you go out and make some immediately.

Have you dug the spill of sugar here? Cast your gems on this sepia through. Brown sugarless, caramel treat, honey gold baby sweet enough to eat. Peach skinned girl. Coffee, cream, chocolate darling out of a dream.

Walnut tinted, cocoa , brown, pomegranate pride in town. Rich cream colored. Plum tinted black. Feminine sweetness is not Harlem's lack. From the glow of the quince to the blush of the rose, persimmon, bronze, cinnamon toes, black berry cordial, Virginia Dare wine.

All those sweet colors flavor Harlem. Walnut, cocoa. Let me repeat. Caramel, brown sugar, a chocolate treat, molasses taffy, coffee, cream, licorice, clove, cinnamon. A honey brown dream.

Ginger, wine gold, persimmon, black berry all through the spectrum Harlem folks vary. So if you want to know beauty's rainbow sweet thrill, stroll with me down luscious, delicious, fine sugar hill.

[APPLAUSE]

Self love. Ladies and gentlemen, I would remind you that it is a wonderful thing to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. It is a wonderful thing to understand that we have lived, many of us have lived in the time of a great American.

That history will talk about our time long after we have gone. And that one of the highlights of this century in the world will be Dr. Martin Luther King. In the world, there are some men and women who will be like flagships on this sea of turbulence and strife and winning and losing and anger and love and gentleness and courage and cowardice.

And Dr. King will be a flagship. And it is a wonderful thing to celebrate the birthday. It will be sad if that's all we do. There's an African saying, which is the trouble for the thief is not how to steal the chief's bugle, but where to blow it.

Having done so, what do you do about it? That is the question. So that after Monday we say, well, I did it honey. I went to three things. You don't know, girl, because I canceled two important things and you don't know.

I went to church and then I went to this and then I went. You ought to say-- I went over to that university. I listened to a woman talk for two hours. Listen, the band didn't play but a short while. But, honey, that woman just got, I have paid for it.

[LAUGHTER]

Not quite. Not quite. We are obliged in our intelligence and wit and courage and gratitude to translate the dream to the children, to our partners, to our colleagues, our neighbors, our citizens, but mainly to ourselves in our hearts.

Not to think of that man and that dream as something separate from us, whether we are Black or White, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, Aleut, not different from us. I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.

We have so much in common. Human beings are more alike than we are unalike. Everybody in the world wants a good job. That is, to work at something where one is respected, paid well, honorably.

Everybody wants to be loved, have a love and be loved and be able to love. Have healthy children, a nice house, a good school, someplace to perpetuate their God on Sunday or Saturday or on Friday or whenever, or to go to some profound philosophical lecture and a place to party on Saturday night.

There is no mystique. Not really. And we all have that capability of seeing the oneness in ourselves. Everybody in this auditorium has gone to bed one night or another with pain or fear or loss or grief or insecurity.

And yet each of us has awakened, made whatever ablutions we could or wanted to make, put on our clothes, seen other human beings and said, morning, how are you? Fine. Thanks. And you?

Now, wherever that abides in the human being, therein lies the nobleness of the human spirit. Not nobility. I dislike the word. I think it's pompous. But the nobleness of the human being is to be found in the fact that we rise.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom?

Just because I walk as if I have oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns with the certainty of tides. Just like hopes springing high. Still I rise. Did you want to see me broken, bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops weakened by my soulful cries? Does my sassiness upset you?

Don't take it so hard just cause I laugh as if I have gold mines digging in my own backyard. You can shoot me with your words. You can cut me with your lies. You can kill me with your hatefulness. But just like life, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness offend you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance as if I have diamonds at the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise. Up from a past rooted in pain, I rise.

A black ocean leaping and wide, welling and swelling, bearing in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak miraculously clear, I rise. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the hope and the dream of the slave and soul. Hey, there I go.

[APPLAUSE]