The Beat of the Drums Goes On

(Written for a Black Student Union Coalition Conference)

by Ernie McCray

Sometimes I hear
the beat of the drums.
African drums.
In moments of quiet solitude
when my mind
is in tune
with my people’s
never-ending struggle
for liberty and justice
in America,
a country we built,
from daybreak
to sunset,
with our backs
bent over under the weight of cotton sacks.

It’s the beat of the drums
that reminds me
of history such as that.
And I hear the beat
not so much in my ears
but in all my being
for it’s more a feeling
than a sound
one would hear,
spiritual in nature,
deep and dear,
knowing, intuitively,
that the drums from Africa,
home,
must have vibrated
in the souls
of my ancestry,
penetrating their very bones,
in multiples of tones,
with all they went through,
via America’s racist wrongs,
brutality
in its rawest form.

But the beat,
as it must,
goes on
as we, the descendants
of these enslaved human beings,
are, metaphorically,
still in the fields
still picking away,
still keeping on keeping on,
so aware,
over time,
that overcoming
is basically
all that America
has ever offered us:
a seemingly endless project to work on.

And we must know
that our leaders,
our heroes,
fell in step with
the drumming,
guiding us
with vision,
keeping our vision
on the premise
that equality could be achieved,
movers and shakers
and trouble makers
who got underground railroads
up and running,
who got our spirit
pumping and humming,
hipping us to
what was going down,
laying out questions in our minds
along a number of lines:
Why not go back to the Mother Land
when we’re not wanted in this land?
Should we fight for
human and civil rights
non-violently,
turning the other cheek,
or determine our destiny
by any means necessary?

And that beat goes on,
as we face the challenges
of today,
the most demanding being
countering the sinister forces
who try to
erase our very history,
Black History,
something akin
to deleting American History itself,
for we are the story
that stands
out in
its telling,
the true tale therein.

Same old same old.
Another sin against humanity
for us to tend to,
a vital reason
to keep our voices raised,
|like a choir
singing to all of the Milky Way,
our eyes fixed on the prize
like an owl seeking out its prey,
moving in our hearts and souls
to the
stick driven licks
and changing pitches
played on the udu,
to the
fast nimble beats
of bare hands striking the djembe,
making you want to dance
the blues away,
to the
talking drums
reminding us
in suggestive tones,
to never turn away
from the quest
for justice for everyone
as the victory
remains to be won.

A change is going to come.
The beat of the drums
goes on.