Freedom Winter
On February 7, 2013,
Mississippi officially abolished
slavery by notifying
the U.S. Archivist that it
approved the 13th Amendment.
It took a professor
of Neurobiology, Dr. Ranjan Batra,
to uncover
the “oversight.” Funny how
the mind works—
and history too in its magical
twists of irony.
Someone “just forgot” for
“whatever reason,”
according to Dr. Batra. It’s progress,
I must admit.
My brown daughter was nine
at the time, and
officially no longer three-
fifths a person,
nor chattel, not ruled
by partus sequitur ventrem—this
West African princess
who now possessed her bones,
muscles, and skin as her very
own—each a thousand
years in the long, complex chain
of human taking,
breaking, and making.
Freedom Winter
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