Naperville students’ MLK poems
Students in Matt Sniadecki’s class at Jefferson Junior High School in Naperville wrote poems based on the connections between Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Abraham Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation.”
Students picked out words they found to be particularly powerful from each, then used those words like puzzle pieces to construct a poem of their own, called “found poetry.”
Here are a few of the poems:
By Yeun Pak
Manacles of segregation
Chains of discrimination
Fierce justice
Rights of life
Liberty
Free
Freedom
Pursuit of happiness
Physical force
Soul force
Bitterness
Hatred
Unspeakable
Unmindful
Rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream
Struggle together
Beautiful symphony of brotherhood
Let freedom ring
I have a dream
Free at last!
By Evan Honeysett
Five score years ago, American society promises of democracy,
Like insufficient funds,
Manacles of segregation, fatal for our nation,
Negro forever struggle.
Military symbolic shadow like a warm threshold,
I have a dream.
Emancipation Proclamation devoted of civil rights,
I have a dream.
My friends staggered in jail, negro in Mississippi, negro in New York in the slums
And ghettos,
I have a dream.
That God’s children with faith and symphony, let freedom ring,
I have a dream.
From every hill and molehill, let freedom ring,
I have a dream today.
By Megan Manious
One hundred years later, the Negro still is not free,
We have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition,
We cannot walk alone,
We must pledge that we shall always march ahead, we cannot turn back,
I say to you today,
Signs stating “for whites only” cannot be satisfied,
I have a dream,
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will judged by
not the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,
I have a dream today, that black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white
boys and white girls as brothers and sister,
Let freedom ring,
“Free at last! Free at last! Thank god almighty we are free at last!
By Zack Swartz
First day of January,
All persons held as slaves shall be free,
Warranted by the Constitution,
Received into the armed service,
Rebellion against the United States,
Full period of one hundred days,
To be free to abstain from violence,
Reasonable wages,
Year one thousand eight hundred and sixty three,
Abraham Lincoln,
President of the United States,
The seal of the United States to be affixed,
Forever free.
By Sam Sullivan
Not an end but a beginning
Sunlit path
Lonely Island
Black men
White men
Guaranteed rights of life
Brotherhood
Discrimination
Poverty
Shameful
A smaller ghetto to a larger one
Narrow jail cells
Slums
Northern cities
“For whites only”
Join hands
Little black boys and little black girls
Little white boys and little white girls
We cannot walk alone
I have a dream today
Will not be judged by the color of my skin
I have a dream