My daughter performed my poem "Free your Afrikan Mind" at American University in Washington, DC in 2025. I performed the same poem at the Kennedy Center in 2024. Hope you enjoy the merging of the performances! The poem can be found on my album "A Young Black Man's Anthem: Love, Afrika, and Revolution Revisited" and my book "From the Limbs of my Poetree." Both available wherever you get your books and albums! Let's GO! #afrika #afrikaday #africa #africaday #freeyourmind #happyafricaday
Free your Afrikan mind, my brother!
Free your Afrikan mind, my sister!
Free yourself from the mental chains
That say you’re not from that “dark continent”
When ain’t no one on the continent darker than you
Realize you have been brainwashed by wicked White men
But your oppression has also been perpetrated by your own brethren
I know the rapings, castrations, and lynchings were grueling
But the castration of the mind has more longevity than a lynching
You’re inching further and further away from your motherland
You let them tell you that your slave-inspired slang was Ebonics
And not a rich Afrikan language with English words
And so you were afraid to speak the word
You believed them when they told you Africa was dark
However, you didn’t realize
It’s because they’ve been trying to steal her sunlight for centuries
From whitening the ancient Egyptian,
To whitening Beethoven,
To whitening Michael Jackson
You’ve been brainwashed
From slave codes to Black codes to Jim Crow
You’ve been brainwashed
From K-1 to cum laude
You’ve been brainwashed
You see, you wanna be American,
Though America has decided she no longer needs you
While an entire continent pleads for you to come home
So free your Afrikan mind!
Free those naps oppressed under that process
Free those hips from those tight jeans
That only attract negative attention
And suffocate your natural, Nilotic curves
Free those brown, luscious lips
From ravishing red lipstick
Free your kidneys from sippin’ 40s
And sip fresh waters from the Nile basin
Free yourself from feeling you have to step all over your lady
And step with me up Mt. Kilimanjaro
Free your mind and stop trying to “free willy”
Into your co-partner in our fight for liberation
To deny that you’re Afrikan
Is to deny your place on earth as the first
Why claim to be a nigga and kill over street corners
When you can claim ancient Nubia?
Why claim a country
When you can have a continent?
I speak to all of you in denial
From Afrikan Americans to West Indians
To even continental Afrikans
Malcolm and Marcus died trying to free your mind
Accepting your Afrikan blood turns you into a worldwide majority
And not a national minority
It stretches your history much farther than Mississippi
It explains why you’re as beautiful as you are,
Why you worship like no other,
And why you can never be defeated
When you stand on the shoulders of God and your ancestors!
ALL OF YOU RISE!
You ghetto prisoners who are really Ghanaian princes rise!
You proud-to-be bitches who are really Burundian princesses rise!
You who think being born on the continent
Is enough to make you Afrikan rise!
Dark-skinned Latinos rise!
Confused Cape Verdeans rise!
Westernized West Indians rise!
Ego-centric Euro-Afrikans rise!
Amnesic Afro-Asians rise!
Almost annihilated Australian Aborigines RISE!
Realize, like Bob Marley realized,
That being Afrikan is a state of mind
And walk with me into that bright Afrikan sunrise
And I guarantee that your mind, body, spirit and nation
Will rise, rise, rise, high as the glistening skies
Just free your almighty Afrikan mind!
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