Despite the dead dream,
We see a Free Future:²
The Wings of the swallow
Tell me Freedom is no accident.³
To-day we wear these chains and are here!
To-morrow we’ll be Fetterless—but Where?⁴
It is no more possible to be
Half Free than to be half Alive:⁵
This Freedom, this Liberty—is
Needful to man as Air, usable as Water.⁶
The only way to deal with an Unfree world is to be
So Free that your very Existence is an act of Rebellion.⁷
If I am free in my Love, and in my Soul my free—
Angels alone, that Soar above—enjoy such Liberty.⁸
Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound:
Roll through our ravished ears,
Say ye unto foul oppression:
Cease—ye tyrants rage no more!⁹
Freedom is not a word: freedom is the
Dark swamp Crossed, and death Defied, fear
Laid Aside, and a Song that whispers, croons,
And while it whispers cries: Oh, Freedom!¹⁰
¹ Lord Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon
² Nikki Giovanni, They Clapped
³ Caroline S. Kotowicz, Ritual of Dreaming
⁴ Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse
⁵ Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait
⁶ Robert Hayden, Frederick Douglass
⁷ Albert Camus, The Rebel
⁸ Richard Lovelace, To Althea, from Prison
⁹ George Moses Horton, Liberty and Slavery
¹⁰ Langston Hughes, Ballad of the Seven Songs