Jacqueline Woodson - February 12, 1963 lyrics

I am born on a Tuesday at University Hospital Columbus, Ohio, USA— a country caught between Black and White. I am born not long from the time or far from the place where my great-great-grandparents worked the deep rich land unfree dawn till dusk unpaid drank cool water from scooped-out gourds looked up and followed the sky's mirrored constellation to freedom. I am born as the South explodes, too many people too many years enslaved, then emancipated but not free, the people who look like me keep fighting and marching and getting k**ed so that today— February 12, 1963 and every day from this moment on, brown children like me can grow up free. Can grow up learning and voting and walking and riding wherever we want I am born in Ohio but the stories of South Carolina already run like rivers through my veins.