"I am, We are, Freddie Gray!"

How many of us remember the poetry of African American poet, Countee Cullen, 1903-1946? Rev. and Mrs. Frederick Cullen of Salem Methodist Church in Harlem adopted him in 1918. I had remembered his, "Yet do I marvel at the curious thing, (God) made a poet black, and bid him sing." But Baltimore has caused me to remember his Baltimore poem, “Incident.”  

Once riding in old Baltimore,

Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,

I saw a Baltimorean,

Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

And he was no whit bigger.

And so I smiled, but he poked 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.

Some persons wonder why we who are black are hurt and angered by what they call "isolated incidents" of bias and bigotry. Our answer; it is because they are NOT "isolated incidents". There is a connecting link between calling us the n_____ word, and treating us as less than human.

"I am, We are, Freddie Gray!"

I/We wish that all of us were.