Pocket Justice Poetry

Sojourner Truth

Shake Every Place

It always amazed me how little truth

There was to be found in the world

And how those who talked the most

About it didn’t live it and those that lived it

Didn’t have time to be talking about it.

So it seemed to me that the branches stretched out

So far from the trunk that they didn’t know

They were all on the same tree together.

And when I decided to make my name

I knew I had to travel to tell this truth

And “shake every place” I went to

To make the leaves rattle all over.

The roots draw up the water evenly

To every branch, and why change that?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to see

There is enough water for the whole tree?

*”I will shake every place I go to.”—Sojourner Truth, from an 1851 speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio

“The truth is powerful and will prevail.”

--Sojourner Truth

Harriet Tubman

Away

This is a thing that has always been done:

Running away. It was what we called it.

There is so much to run away from,

But even more for us to run toward.

I enjoyed the love of the masses

And always yearned for it more

Personally. Running away meant love.

Running away meant the loss of him.

Running away was service and pain,

The protection of my family and

Also brothers and sisters who were

Not my own but everyone’s if

Everyone could only see that.

A child will threaten to run away

If angry. A wife will run away

If not heard. I was always away.

“If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going. If you want to taste freedom, keep going.”

--Harriet Tubman

Mary Edwards Walker

Habiliments

Item one: Long skirt muddled in dirt

Tending to spread disease. Item two: 

Flammable petticoats. Item three:

Straitjacket corsets bruising the organs.

Item four: fabrics dyed in arsenic.

You see, I still list these crimes of dress

From the grave---they are an external

Hindrance and were always the real cause

Of women’s oppression. Who knows what

We might have achieved sans twenty pounds

Of handicap. If you cannot sit and cross

Your legs in mixed company, you will never be free.

Item one: Pants. Item two: Shirt.

Item three: Jacket. Item four: Top hat.

If the suffragists had dressed reasonably,

I would have been their most ardent supporter.

“The greatest sorrows from which women suffer today are . . . caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing. The want of the ballot is but a toy in comparison.”

--Mary Edwards Walke

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

What I Am

Because he wanted a boy I would be one.

Because he wanted a wife I would be one.

Because they wanted a mother, I would be one.

My life fit a pattern I could not deny.

But it was in the patterns, I searched

For a life unafraid of the “tyrant custom,”*

And also free from it. I am not,

My sisters are not, my daughters

Are not, my dear mother was not

The criminal. “In the beginning”

Are not words that must define us.

No woman’s soul has ever believed this.

So much mattered to me, and I was not

Always right, though I was never wrong.

*menstruation

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. Every truth we see is ours to give the world, not to keep for ourselves alone, for in so doing we cheat humanity out of their rights and check our own development.”

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Belva Lockwood

A Distraction

It stayed with me—to be refused

Admission to law school because I would

“Be likely to distract the attention

Of the young men.” Therefore, I would distract

Them by getting in another law school

And distract the President when he 

Refused my rightful degree and distract

The populace of D.C. by riding a bike and distract

The nation by running for President

And distract the suffragists who thought

I was not sincere, and in my 75th year

Distract the Supreme Court in order

To gain a settlement for the devastated Cherokees.

A life of distraction left little room

For anything other than what I was meant to do.

“I do not believe in sex distinction in literature, law, politics, or trade—or that modesty and virtue are more becoming to women than to men, but wish we had more of it everywhere.”

--Belva Lockwood

Ida B. Wells

Outside In

If you cannot suffer to see it, you have

No right to benefit from it. If in

The light of day, you will not stand 

Under this tree and look upward

Into the branches where the rope

Still hangs, you will never prosper

More than the devil. I went

To these places, and I wrote about them.

I went to the parade and I joined it.

There is no difference between

The dark Southern site of a lynching

And a springtime parade for suffrage

In our capital if your mind is set against

Justice. I still want everyone to understand:

If your wrong is outside, so is your in.

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

--Ida B. Wells-Barnett