Good afternoon everyone:

It is impossible to comprehend the tragic march of COVID-19 across our country without explicitly confronting the crystalline and disturbing manifestations of racial disparity and injustice that have followed in its wake. Epicenters of suffering tied to disinvested neighborhoods of color. Unconscionable, ugly disproportionality of deaths in the African American and LatinX communities. Under-provision of testing services in our poorest non-white communities. Pervasive and devastating financial collapse of small businesses owned by people of color. And the list goes on and on.

Tuesday’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis wasn’t a consequence of the virus. But it was a consequence of the unremitting, insidious cancer of racism that lurks immediately below the surface of daily life. Whether expressed through eruptions of authoritarian abuse from municipal police departments, or through COVID’s exacerbation and amplification of health and economic inequities, it remains an corrosive, intolerable undercurrent in American society.  

The excessiveness of the lethal force turned on George Floyd – and on Ahmaud Arbery while he jogged in a Georgia subdivision . . .  and on Atatiana Jefferson as she slept in her own bed in Fort Worth . . . and on and on – is incomprehensible, outrageous, and violative of every norm of human decency. We must stand as one nation in demanding justice for all these victims.

I found myself turning last night to two Kresge Eminent Artist poets to help find voice for my outrage and sadness – and perhaps to serve as a partial antidote for a dwindling reservoir of hope.

Naomi Long Madgett, our 2012 recipient, published her first book of poetry at age 17 and established Lotus Press in Detroit in 1972, making it possible for other African American poets to publish and distribute their work. Her poem “Midway” was written 50 years ago – it resonates with equal power today:

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I’ve come this far to freedom and I won’t turn back.

I’m climbing to the highway from my old dirt track.

           I’m coming and I’m going

           And I’m stretching and I’m growing

And I’ll reap what I've been sowing or my skin’s not black.

I’ve prayed and slaved and waited and I’ve sung my song.

You’ve bled me and you’ve starved me but I’ve still grown strong.

           You’ve lashed me and you’ve treed me

           And you’ve everything but freed me

But in time you’ll know you need me and it won’t be long.

I’ve seen the daylight breaking high above the bough.

I’ve found my destination and I’ve made my vow;

           So whether you abhor me

           Or deride me or ignore me

Mighty mountains loom before me and I won’t stop now.

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Gloria House, our 2019 recipient, has been a poet, human and civil rights activist, organizer and educator for fifty years. Here are a few of the stanzas of her 2017 work “We Will Stand”:

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Ruthlessly removed from the lands of their birth,

Brought here against their will,

our ancestors chose to survive—

though the days they endured were deadly.

Through centuries of degradation,

they kept choosing to root themselves in the soil of a legacy

that could not be wrenched from them,

a memory of how to stand

in the earth of humanity, to hold their footing

in the ground of Love that sustains everything.

They lifted their voices with tenacity and determination:

We shall not

We shall not

We shall not be moved!

We shall not

We shall not be moved!

Like a tree planted by the water

We shall not be moved!

We have chanted those words in our spirits over generations,

longing for freedom,

for a place where we could feel the earth’s throbbing beneath our feet,

and release the bone-deep trepidations

buried in us by centuries of terror.

We sang against lynchings by Klansmen,

Southern sheriffs and other “guardians” of society.

Moving North, we believed, ballot in hand,

we could join the ranks of the free.

We sang.

We must sing our song again

and summon the will to stand

like those proud 19th Century African men and women in Detroit,

who, in the face of relentless intimidation,

built churches and schools and mutual aid societies,

and harbored those running to Canada for freedom;

like the sweet doctor, Ossian, who said I will defend my home

from organized violence;

like our grandfathers and fathers, who fought for dignity in the plants,

and the right to unionize to protect the value of their labor;

like all the freedom fighters who made the way for us in this city,

we must stand.

We must keep on choosing to root ourselves in the soil of that legacy

that cannot be ripped out of us, a memory

of how to stand in the earth of our humanity,

to hold our footing in the ground of Love that sustains everything,

and stand like a tree planted by the water,

like Detroiters of old,

like the people of a city planted by the water.

We shall not be moved.

We will stand.

We will stand.

We will stand.

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The monographs of the lives and work of these two extraordinary artists are on our website. I encourage you to spend time there – their work is affirming, inspiring, and sobering at a time we need all of that so desperately.

Rip