Jacqueline Woodson - South carolina at war lyrics

Because we have a right, my grandfather tells us-- we are sitting at his feet and the story tonight is why people are marching all over the South-- to walk and sit and dream wherever we want. First they brought us here. Then we worked for free. Then it was 1863, and we were supposed to be free but we weren't. And that's why people are so mad. And it's true, we can't turn on the radio without hearing about the marching. We can't go to downtown Greenville without seeing the teenagers walking into stores, sitting where brown people still aren't allowed to sit and getting carried out, their bodies limp, their faces calm. This is the way brown people have to fight, my grandfather says. You can't just put your fist up. You have to insist on something gently. Walk toward a thing slowly. But be ready to die, my grandfather says, for what is right. Be ready to die, my grandfather says, for everything you believe in. And none of us can imagine d**h but we try to imagine it anyway. Even my mother joins the fight. When she thinks our grandmother isn't watching she sneaks out to meet the cousins downtown, but just as she's stepping through the door, her good dress and gloves on, my grandmother says, Now don't go getting arrested. And Mama sounds like a little girl when she says, I won't. More than a hundred years, my grandfather says, and we're still fighting for the free life we're supposed to be living So there's a war going on in South Carolina and even as we play and plant and preach and sleep, we are a part of it. Because you're colored, my grandfather says. And just as good and bright and beautiful and free as anybody. And nobody colored in the South is stopping, my grandfather says, until everybody knows what's true.