Congratulations Summon and Shawntel Lay!

Summon and Shawntel are today's prizewinners in our Black History Month contest! Summon correctly credited Franklin Thomas with the following quote: "One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin... instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings." Shawntel filled in the blanks in Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise."

Here is the poem in its entirety:

"Still I Rise"

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise

(Source: The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry--yet another of the databases available to you through your library)

Watch tomorrow for the next two quotations in our contest! Good luck!