Change for 100 by Phetote Mshairi

A century is merely a scintilla of eternity
and centennials are poignant remember-whens
that invoke roller coasters of sensational sentiments.

But what happens when the Centennial has passed, and it’s no longer in vogue to help Black folk?

How do we free the Spirits of Greenwood still beckoning to be released from the sunken place as they climb stairs to nowhere wondering: “where oh where did our legacies go?”

Does anyone have change for a hundred?

I said…Does anyone here have the kind of gumption and change that could transform 35 square blocks of possibilities nestled on sacred Native land, into an Ebony oasis, despite the desolation of discrimination and the ubiquitous caw and claws of Jim Crow laws?

Can you break a hundred? I mean do you have the mettle to break generational curses conjured and regurgitated by learned behavior exacerbated by adopting massa’s verbal abuse and having the nerve to call the n-word a “term of endearment”?

Are you humble enough to hear that you need change?

When someone tells you to “pull yourself up by the bootstraps”,
do you have the gumption, plans, and resources to produce the kind of change that could mass produce miraculous boots that walk on slaughters?

Do you have the resilience of your Ancestors who carried sons and daughters through Motherlands and cotton fields; from sharecropping, to sharing profits in an Ebony oasis called the Greenwood District?

After centuries of slavery and years of Jim Crow, African Americans were told to pull themselves up by the bootstraps; so, they reached down deep into the ash and mire with determination and desire; they grasp the straps and they PULLED!

They defied the gravity of depravity and elevated above envy, isms, and calamities.

We will change the “stairs to nowhere” to somewhere when we follow the example of our forefathers and mothers and be change that we need.

~Phetote Mshairi

oet, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Fellow
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