I had always been very proud of the fact that my dad's side of the family, who were Scottish refugees, had from all reports rejected slavery in America as did many of Scottish heritage in the U.S. because of their own history facing indentured slavery and persecution. Many Scottish immigrants were jailed for the slightest offense or debts and sold off into indentured servitude to feed the need for cheap labor to British firms settling the colonies. However, I just recently discovered on my Mom's side that her family was actually very entrenched in the plantation culture of the carolina coast and owned many slaves. I was rather shocked upon reading an ancestors will the casualness of passing along slaves in a will along with the knives and spoons.

As a poet I wanted to help reconcile this and decided to do a found poem mixing the will with one of Obama's speeches, to compare and contrast some of the progress, as well as how far we have to go. I tried several speeches, but then when I got to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and was chilled by the coincidental timing of the listing of the slave names with his mentioning of the Nobel prize recipients that included some of the great black civil rights leaders of the world.

An American Poem:
A Case of Knifes and Forks, Four Negroes 

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.

Item 1st I lend to my wife Patience Aycock

It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations

two feather beds and furniture

that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world

one mare by name Dimont one plow hoe

we are not mere prisoners of fate

and Cutter fraim and gin one Lomb and gin

Our actions matter and can bend history

six setting chairs, one Bofat  

in the direction of justice.

and all the furniture belonging to it.

And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge

Two pots of her choice one frying pan and Spider,

the considerable controversy

two pewter dishes three do Basons

that your generous decision has generated.

one Gallon one and two ./2 gallon

In part, this is because I am at the beginning

and too quart Basons and six do plates.

and not the end, of my labors on the world stage

Two cows and calves or yearlings

Compared to some of the giants of history

four head of Sheep one flat Iron.

who have received this prize

One Case of Knifes and forks, four negroes

Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela

by names of Jacob, Peters, and two by name of Haners

my accomplishments are slight

and the house and plantation on which I now live

And then there are the men and women around the world

beginning at the mouth of the little Swamp

who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice

and runs up a bottom called the gully bottom

those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering

to Elly Hooks fence containing the whole of my land