The
Black Family Pledge
By Dr. Maya Angelou
BECAUSE we have forgotten our
ancestors,
our children no longer give us honor.
BECAUSE
we have lost the path our ancestors cleared
kneeling in perilous undergrowth,
our children cannot find their way.
BECAUSE
we have banished the God of our ancestors,
our children cannot pray.
BECAUSE
the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing,
our children cannot hear us crying.
BECAUSE
we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering,
our befuddled children give birth to children
they neither want nor understand.
BECAUSE
we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our
gates, an holds us up to the mirror of the world shouting,
"Regard the loveless".
Therefore
we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace our
lowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our
illiterate,
to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good
things,
knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and
sisters.
We ARE our brothers and sisters.
IN
HONOR of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues,
and in gratitude to the same God who brought us out of hopeless
desolation,
we make this pledge.
