Reverend Lauren Spivey Levwood
For Claudette Colvin, Who Went First
inspired by A Mighty Girl’s retelling of her story
The people in Montgomery were under duress.
Segregated –
not merely separated;
Black people treated
less than human for the color of our skin.
Our lives a constant payment for the white shame
about the situation we were in.
I was fifteen years old –
old enough to understand,
to ride the bus alone,
to make decisions on my own –
like whether I would stand
or remain seated
for what I believed in.
You see, I’d been learning in school
about Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth:
Ancestors whose persistence made a difference,
who sat on my shoulders as partners in resistance.
So, when the driver said “Get up,”
I stayed seated.
When he said “Rise,”
I rooted, not retreated.
And though I must have looked alone,
what glued me to my seat was not just me.
“Sit down, girl!” they said in either ear.
As their hands pressed on my shoulders,
a force greater than my fear.
And as I listened, their truth
rang loud and clear,
a melody with harmony more beautiful than angel wings.
A tune greater
than the false laws that the weak men passed,
an offense to our creator.
Daddy didn’t sleep that night, with me in jail.
Officers dragged me backwards down the bus aisle to my cell.
Charged me with violation of segregation – a law of man –
yet said nothing about whether that law could stand
to be tested against the rubric of the Spirit.
Called me disorderly for not fearing
their manmade rules that had not the weight of Truth about them.
Daddy lay awake at midnight, shotgun clutched to his chest,
every breath one more closer to dawn.
How he hoped he’d get to that morning sun before the Klan come.
Nobody on King Hill slept that night.
Afterward, some praised me;
others called me crazy;
but no one could say I was lazy.
King wrote that I raised
the Spirit needed
for fear to give way,
for us to turn a new page
and start a new day.
And while I would have carried on,
God had different plans;
for when a man
took hold of my body
as if it were his own,
and planted his seed,
that made it time for me
to sit down in a different way,
and do the work of tending
that women do
because the garden of life sometimes grows
whether or not you ask it to.
And so, I passed the torch,
and nine months later,
Rosa rose to sit, the
Ancestors pressing on her shoulders
just like they did mine.
Thus began the boycott,
three hundred and eighty-one days,
a window of time
that opened to the stars of tomorrow –
and tomorrow came pouring in.
“Let freedom ring!” King cried.
“Let justice roll down like waters.”
The stars of our success burned bright
in that midnight era of time,
But it was not without consequence.
Haunted by my record,
I fled to New York with my jaw clenched,
and did not tell my story much.
Until I was eighty-one, when I finally I got up the courage
to ask that my record be expunged.
And it was as if history had been waiting to be righted.
The district attorney provided a statement that said I was
“conscientious, not a criminal; inspired, not illegal.”
I received an apology long overdue:
“Please accept our regrets for the injustice perpetrated upon you.”
And my soul knew the validation from the law of man
that had always been etched in angels’ ink upon my Black skin.
I sought for my name to be cleared after all those years
because it mattered to the people of the future.
Because it matters to the children of today
that they grow up in a garden of possibility,
that progress is made manifest
and inspiration is more than a frilly thing we take out and wear once in a while.
That inspiration is as solid as a bus seat, and as open to all.
That today, when civil rights are still yet under siege,
that the children remember
and call on us to hold them in their seats.
Movements are made of moments,
not just of title figures;
they are held up by many pillars,
by the people and the values that summon their moral centers to stand.
Take my hand,
and walk with me for a while.
And remember
that while the earth turns,
we revolve with it,
and with each revolution
comes the possibility of revelation.
With every generation,
our dreams can make a hope-filled calculation.
This is not a time to be torn asunder.
For, like a tree that’s planted by the water
we shall only be moved
by the spirit of freedom
and by no other.
I left my body at eighty-six,
Seventy-one years after they drug me off the bus,
Five years since I’d been acquitted of what had never been a crime.
While they may not have thought
that a young pregnant girl like me
should be the face of a movement,
my stillness was the matchbox
for the matchstick of hope to strike against,
and spark.
But it’s not really about me – it’s always we.
We shall not be moved.
We are on our way.
We shall overcome.
Lift every voice and sing.
Let freedom ring.
It’s not just me, not just Rosa, not just King.
And it’s not just you, or the leaders of these times, either.
It’s not just Keith Porter or Liam Ramos or Rachel Good or Alex Pretti.
It’s all of us, sitting on that rainbow arc and ready
‘til we slide down to the golden glory
that awaits us
when we love our neighbors as ourselves
and wrap the fabric of freedom around every heart
to keep our nation warm.
Sometimes we must sit for a while until we rise.
– Lauren Spivey Levwood