Unspoken Family History

Born on a plantation in the south

and into a world

that thought segregation was just

my great-grandmother

found her brother hanging in a tree

He was killed by the klan

The police had watched him be lynched

And yet did nothing

Justice never came

Born during the Great Depression

My grandmother

was taught to hate her brown skin

The white kids would point and laugh at her

all while calling her "darkie"

Over time she came to believe

that her brown skin made her ugly

She would refuse to wear makeup

because that was only for the pretty white girls

Born during the Civil Rights Movement

My mom would look out the window

only to see a burning cross

on the front lawn

All while the words of MLK

played on the t.v in the background

As my grandfather read a newspaper

about yet another unarmed black man

killed by the police.

In high school

Back when I was a freshman

I had a spanish teacher

who said my brown skin

made me worth less than a computer

All of these things are true

All of these things happened

And all because people hated our brown skin.