CIVIL RIGHTS

My grandmother and I sat in her Jersey living room

  watching the Civil Rights Movement on TV

I was a little girl, she middle aged

she’d come to the States from Sicily

after the Second World War

she never mastered the jumpy, twisty

tongue of English and this pained her

We sat and watched brave children walking to school

  surrounded by angry mobs

we watched the marchers, the lunchcounter sit-ins,

the voting registrations, the sheriffs, the dogs,

the full force of fire hoses turned on people

knocked to the sidewalk

“Perche?” my grandmother asked.  She wanted  to

   know why this was happening

“They want to vote, Nonna

  They want to go to whatever schools and restaurants they want”

“Why can’t they?  They were born here

I can go anyplace I want and I can’t speak English

I can vote and I can’t speak English

Why can I when they cannot?

This is injustice!”

Their people were once slaves, Nonna”

“And we were always sharecroppers, almost slaves,

to the Duke D’Averna

These people are the real Americans”

I remember that my grandmother never mentioned color

the TV newspeople kept saying “Negroes”

All she saw were Americans

who worked here

who spoke English

Nonna knew Mussolini had grabbed Abyssinia

she knew the words to the song “Faccetta Nera”

she knew Sicilian men had gone to Ethiopia to work

married the pretty women there

she knew a relative they called LAfricano

who worked and loved in Africa

he bragged how wonderful it was there

Now in the States, her adopted country

Now in what she thought was the land of liberty

my grandmother was astounded, horrified

at the images on TV

she kept saying

“I was not born here

I cannot speak English

yet I can vote, go wherever I want

Why can I when they cannot?

This is injustice.

Maria Fama