June Jordan
June Jordan
June Millicent Jordanwas a Caribbean-American bisexual poet and activist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 July 1936
CountryUnited States of America
determination self blood
... the histories of Blacks and Jews in bondage and out of bondage, have been blood histories pursued through our kindred searchings for self-determination. Let this blood be a stain of honor that we share. Let us not now become enemies to ourselves and to each other.
attitude fighting political
That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes.
mean heart grace
Behold the heart and mind of Angela Davis: open, relentless, and on time! She is as radiant, she is as true, as that invincible sunrise she means means means to advance With all of the faith and all of the grace of her entirely devoted life.
country kings war
When that devil's bullet lodged itself inside the body of Martin Luther King, he had already begun an astonishing mobilization of poor, Black, white, latino Americans who had nothing to lose. They would challenge our government to eliminate exploitative, merciless, and war-mongering policies, nationwide, or else "tie up the country" through "means of civil disobedience." Dr. King intended to organize those legions into "coercive direct actions" that would make of Babylon a dysfunctional behemoth begging for relief. Is it any wonder he was killed?
new-york rainy-day order
Sometimes we become so sophisticated we have to read the New York Times in order to figure out whether it's a hot or a rainy day.
thinking rights white
In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.
late
I am working never to be late again.
communication men media
There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage.
yield needs genius
The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.
thinking able honest
I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.
reality tree hatred
and if i if i ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate i o- bey in lieu of impulse and realities (the blossoming flamingos of my wild mimosa trees) then let love freeze me out. (from i must become a menace to my enemies)
children father kids
The courts cannot garnish a fathers salary, nor freeze his account, nor seize his property on behalf of his children, in our society. Apparently this is because a kid is not a car or a couch or a boat.
writing important language
The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet
thinking firsts telling-the-truth
The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think