THE LAST SURVIVOR OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS WAR, JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI, 2011--in memory of Rachid Rashad, died 10/20/2011

by Michael H. Brownstein

He would wake to the stains of battle
and we would hear the angry cries too,
huge bolts of thunder within electricity,
the tearing of clothes from poverty’s children.
He liked listening to the gallop of rain,
defending the injured, helping the betrayed.
He did not own a slave name.

You cannot tear down the Wall of Racism
ten bricks thick with only a hammer.
Once he got a hold of Casey Jones’ tools
and his work went easy until the powers
that be stripped him of almost everything he had.
He returned to his hammer beginning where he left off.
He did not own a slave name.

In his last year he read the political poems of Langston Hughes,
the Kerner Report about the riots of the sixties,
every alternative newspaper he could find to discover truth,
and he wrote letters to the editor of the News-Tribune.

Remember him as a veteran of the Korean War,
remember him organizing others with Saul Alinsky.
remember him for his petitions on fair play and equal rights,
remember him for how he shared his knowledge openly.

He did not own a slave name.

Remember him...