South of Haunted Dreams

        I am not my father, not of my father's generation. I was not tempered in the kiln of Jim Crow. I was instead forged in a new furnace, hammered out of a new tradition - wholly connected to the old, as all tradition must be, but so utterly different. I do not come to the South with hat in hand, head bowed, timid and humble. I stand tall and firmly planted. I am not small. I take up plenty of space. I am proud of who and what I am, as arrogant as my father ever was. And I burn with an anger that is rightfully his, but that is anger nonetheless. And I am afraid, am almost certain in fact, that before this trip ends someone will have died.
        Slowly I come to realize that I am not the man I once was, not the man who once believed he was who he was from the inside out, that the blackness of my skin is merely a physical attribute like being bearded or being tall.
        No, I am different now. I have awakened from my slumber.
-- Eddy Harris, South of Haunted Dreams

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