Alabama: Ashely M. Jones

Photo: Amarr Croskey

ALL Y’ALL REALLY FROM ALABAMA

“...The straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South.”
            ― Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,Why We Can't Wait (Beacon Press, 2011)

this       here       the      cradle      of      this      here
nation—everywhere  you   look,  roots   run   right
back  south.  every  vein filled with red dirt, blood,
cotton.   we   the   dirty  word  you  spit  out   your
mouth.  mason  dixon  is  an  imagined  line—you
can  theorize  it, or wish it real, but  it’s  the  same
old  ghost—see-through,   benign.   all   y’all  from
alabama;  we  the wheel  turning  cotton  to make
the nation move. we the scapegoat in a land built
from death. no longitude or latitude disproves
the truth of founding fathers’ sacred oath:
           we hold these truths like dark snuff in our jaw,
           Black oppression’s not happenstance; it’s law.

Featured music:
"Suna" | Sugoi | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com/
"Insular" | Nylonia | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com/
"Bellerina" | South Pause | Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com/

“Portrait of Harriet” | Ashley M. Jones, Rebekah Griffin Greene, conductor Alexander Fokkens, and the Alabama School of Fine Arts music department | Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaZKcz9h9_Q&t=3056s