Get Your Knee Off My Neck

A Poem for George Floyd

By Hettie V. Williams

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

This land is my land more than

It is yours, my people been here

Since the eighteenth century

By way of the Middle Passage.

Get your knee off my neck.

You looted my ancestors from Africa.

They toiled in the cotton fields, planted rice

Were Patriots and Loyalists in 1776

And built your White House soon after.

Get your knee off my neck.

Nat Turner rebelled in 1831

Many whites were felled

So, they had the father of the

Black nation hanged, drawn and quartered.

Get your knee off my neck.

I am Nat Turner. And you are the descendant of looters.

Civil Wars came

Many were maimed at Fort Pillow.

But we freed ourselves,

And Buffalo Soldiers road the great plains

Get your knee off my neck.

In 1896, this nation birthed Jim Crow.