The Souls of Our People

The souls of our people
Have always cried to the LORD.
The souls of our people
Have always relied on the LORD.

From the moment the soles of our feet,
Touched the dusty shores of North America,
The souls of our people cried to the LORD.
Our fathers that were born in this strange land,
Who never saw freedom land,
Cried to the LORD.
We mastered our pain,
And In the songs we sang,
our souls were crying to the LORD.

When freedom came by emancipation,
The souls of our people didn’t go on a vacation.
They worked the lands, and died at the hands
Of oppressors, all the while crying out to the LORD.
From the southern backroads, strange fruit dangled from trees.
While the blood of our people ran deep into the earth.
Giving birth, to generations of sharecroppers and freedom marchers.
All of us, in our souls crying out the LORD.

From Jim Crow, our souls cried out to the LORD.
Our pastors and big mommas praying on the hard floors of wooden shacks,
In blistering heat and hard seats.
Dealing with those hard times and humanity’s crimes
That took place when the sun would go down
And set in many small towns.
The souls of our people cried to the LORD.

All the while time marched on,
Our souls filled with sorrow but promise.
We marched and marched,
Bringing the criminality of our oppressors before the world’s eyes.
We watched our leaders die.
Which gave higher decibels to our cry.
Our weeping began with silence,
Then whimpers, and graduated to blood curling screams,
From the hulls of ships on the Atlantic to jails in Birmingham.
The souls our people continued cry to the LORD.

Then our chains changed.
No longer were we held against our will.
Our will was being held by vices.
From alcohol to herion to crack cocaine.
A chain is a chain by any other name.
And the souls of our people continue to cry.
It has been said,
We are a blues people.
Teaching oppressors how to deal with the blues.
After all, 9/11 taught them one thing.
There is no safe.
Now they walk in paranoia,
Scaring themselves into a frenzy of fear.
When our history with them,
Has always been clear.
How did we deal with the slavery, the rapes, the racism, the lynchings, the molestation of our minds for hundreds of years?
The souls of our people simply cried to the LORD.
And we continue to cry and cry out.
We shall always cry to the LORD.
After all this time,
He is really all we have ever really had.
Richard J Wright