Minute Three

Day three of commemorating the last moments of George Floyd’s life:

 

 

4/30/92 for Rodney King

by Lucille Clifton

 

so

the body

of one black man

is rag and stone

is mud

and blood

the body of one

black man

contains no life

worth loving

so the body

of one black man

is nobody

mama

mama

mamacita

is there no value

in this skin

mama

mama

if we are nothing

why

should we spare

the neighborhood

mama

mama

who will be next and

why should we save

the pictures

 

 

Lucille Clifton’s “4/30/92 for Rodney King” looks like someone kicked it in at the sides, pounded it to thinness like a piece of meat. The dehumanizing of the black body in the poem’s form and imagery (the body/of one black man/ is rag and stone/is mud and blood) is broken up by a most human response to distress—mama/mama/mamacita. Seven times that voice cries out for help.

 

Rodney King, for those too young to remember or who may not even have been born yet, was beaten by police following a car chase in Los Angeles in March 1991. For fifteen minutes the unarmed King was kicked, stomped on, beaten with batons and tasered by four police officers. The beating only came to light because a man happened to film it from a nearby balcony. The tape was sent to a news station after the LAPD showed no interest in it.

 

In April of 1992, when the four offending officers were acquitted of using excessive force, a five-day riot broke out in the city. Fifty people were killed, 2,000 injured, and over one billion was lost in property. Rodney King was both ridiculed and hailed for a statement he made on television asking for calm during the riots: “I just want to say – you know – can we all get along? Can we, can we get along?”

 

For a more complete account of the beating and riots, link here.

 

If you have the stomach for it after all the violence we’ve witnessed over the past few days, watch the video of the beating here. Low-quality and grainy as it is, the film shows Rodney King attempt to rise, get beaten down, roll over in pain, get rolled back by the police for more beating, then lie still as the beating continues. Just a body to those police officers. A man to anyone with eyes.

 

Clifton’s closing questions, unfortunately, have the ring of prophecy.

 

who will be next and

why should we save

the pictures

 

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A brief biography of Clifton from a previous post:

 

Lucille Clifton was born in New York in 1936.  Her father was a steelworker who sexually abused her, and her mother was a laundress and gifted poet with little formal education. At age sixteen Clifton attended Howard University as a drama major.  She finished her studies in New York.

 

 

She had six children with her husband Fred, a professor at the University of Buffalo.  She was the poet laureate of my home state of Maryland where she eventually settled. She won the National Book Award and was the first African-American woman to win the prestigious Ruth Lilly Prize. She had a separate career as a writer of children’s books and the most unusual career for a famous poet I’ve ever heard of:  Jeopardy show champion.  She died in 2010 at age 73.

 

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Note:  The “Minute Two” poem I put up yesterday is still taped to its marble orb in the park—