Photo Credit: Tom Jenz
The poet Janiya Williams is 16 years old and a resident of central city Milwaukee. She attends the Golda Meir school where she’s enrolled in the Doctor Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy program. Locally, she is known for the award-winning speech she gave at the 2018-2019 We Energies MPS Martin Luther King contest. The controversial speech took the form of a rap poem and addressed emotive issues including Black stereotypes, police brutality, Black pride and excellence.
At the Juneteenth celebration, she told me, “This is my journey. It started off under a false leadership and that didn’t stop me from doing what I wanted to do with my life. Poetry got me here so that’s what imma keep doing. I haven’t been marching since day one, but I’ve been watching and observing since day one. This has become my passion. I’ve learned so much through this protest movement, and I’ve been through so much in this year. I have gained so many uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters. The protest movement was an escape for me to express myself and show my anger in a positive light.”
From time to time, we will feature her poems to illustrate the Black experience in Milwaukee.
Being Black
How long will it take?
I’m seeing the same “mistakes”
We’ve waited all these years
And i still don’t see a change
We screaming black lives matter let us be
But you put it on camera just to let us see
They lacking melanin so they mad at me
But not as mad as they was when Kaep took a knee
They saying liberty for all but freedom ain’t free
I know all about this and i’m only 16
Growing up black it’s rooted in my history
Yeah we made some improvements
But it’s still no victory
Black lives matter
Because we’re human too
But you’d never know it
Based on what we’ve been through
Brutalized and oppressed
By the people who
Are sworn to serve and to protect
But that’s not what they do
Then I start to wonder…
will my dreams ever be made
To a generation that is slayed
A change has to be made
Black bodies are being laid
And I thought we already paid…
Maybe one day it’ll change
And being black won’t be strange
But until then
I’ll have to live with being black!!
