282. My daughter & I perform my poem called "Free Your Afrikan Mind!"

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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices