Alabama the Beautiful
On December 14, 1819, Alabama
Breathed itself beautiful
Alabama rocked itself into beauty
like “sweet tea time” on a front porch
A rocking chair, a square wooden table
Was all that was needed
Sweet lemon tea what turned
Alabama from heart break soul to lovely
All that porch drinking
Made them souls fancy the hue of all
Alabamians
From sweet cream tan to chocolate brown
met along the Mississippi River
To baptize the new Alabama
Something about if you emerge the soul in water the troubling ways become lost in the
Wrinkle of the water—Hallelujah
Worlds on end saw Alabama
Shape itself lovely
That’s why when you riding down 65 south
You see that sign before you:
“Alabama the beautiful”
Dr. Ramona L. Hyman is a writer, speaker, and professor “whose words are powerful memories for us to walk in the 21st century,” says Sonia Sanchez. Presently, Hyman serves as Chair and Professor of the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Oakwood University. Dr. Hyman is a graduate of Temple University (BA), Andrews University (MA), and earned her PhD from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She is the author of I Am Black America. Of her literary work, African American critic Dr. Joyce Joyce says, “Hyman challenges audiences to explore a poetic imagination grounded in a feel for the southern landscape, African-American literary and political history, Black spirituality, and a creative fusion of Black folk speech with a Euro-American poetic vernacular. Dr. Ramona L. Hyman emerges as a strong Black intellectual poetic voice.”
Photo by Emily Corley on Unsplash
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