SAINT LOUIS STORY STITCHERS ARTISTS COLLECTIVE
BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2019
STAND DOWN / RISE UP
Respect and Redirect
STAND DOWN / RISE UP Respect and Redirect is an exploration of African Americans throughout Missouri’s history that have impacted gun violence.
PERFORMANCE
Monday, February 18, 2019
President’s Day
10:00 Juvenile Detention Center (No pubic audience)
2:00 – 3:00 PM Gateway Arch National Park
Mezzanine (Public)
Free and open to the public.
This project is supported by Missouri Foundation for Health, Incarnate Word Foundation, Missouri Humanities Council, and Gateway Arch National Park.
To see Yohanes perform his poem click HERE
“Black Boys Don’t Break”
Yohanes Mulat
Black Boys Don’t Break
They aren’t allowed to take a break
Black Boys Don’t Break
It’s always go, go, go, no break
Black Boys Don’t Break
They won’t come to the wake
You need to wake up
It’s all made up
Black Boys Don’t Break
even if their breaking on the inside
they won’t break down,
they must stand their ground,
because
Black Boys Don’t Break
At least that’s what we think
I mean that’s what society allows
Black Boys Don’t Break
Because they can’t
They can’t take a break or
They’ll end up broken
Black Boys Don’t Break
I know how you feel
But you must learn to deal
Stay strong, I promise you’ll learn to heal,
because
Black Boys Don’t Break
We must be strong
So long as we breath
Until we leave
Breaking Black Boys
Deal in silence
So it becomes less real
They need not know what happens on the inside,
Because
Black Boys Don’t Break
We cannot break
We cannot open up
We cannot speak
Or else we will be considered weak
Black Boys Don’t Break
Though they beat you with a melee of attacks
Stay strong because
Black Boys Don’t Crack
We are like diamonds
We refine under pressure
We are not glass
For we cannot shatter
Breaking Blacks Boy
I know it’s hard
But we don’t have the privilege to break
Because no one is going to put us back together
Brocken Black Boy
You cry out
Black Boys Don’t Break
But hide your brokenness,
Behind your body
Your soul lies in shambles
But your body remains still
Till it doesn’t
Till your message that
Black Boys Don’t Break, Breaks
And you’re left with your broken pieces
Hidden behind a veil that no one sees past
Broken Black Boy
Hides his pain
Though he knows its futility
But he does so with the knowledge that
Black Boys Don’t Break
Our history so rich
Of Black bodies immortalized
For never breaking
Even though this world tried to crush them
Some go too far lengths (langs) to
Produces poetic hues (Hughes)
We still dread how they treated Scott
Yet he lay foundation for abolitionist
We Missouri cannot compromise our integrity
We must be strong
You and I know very well that
Black Boys Don’t Break
That is to say what is a boy
What’s in a man
If not strength
If this boy does not break,
Then does he become man
What is to break
As if we cannot be human
Why must we be so strong
When can we be human
Why does it have to seem like
Black Boys Don’t Break
As if we are an object
As if we are something so far from human
that having emotions makes us weak
This poem be the gateway to my humanity
Where I tell the world I am but a man
And this man cannot be broken
