The Invisible Black Woman

There’s nothing free about a nation that had to own people to become powerful. There’s nothing brave about writing laws that punish the poor while protecting the privileged. There’s nothing patriotic about turning bodies into machines and wombs into battlegrounds.

We are not confused.

This country was built on stolen land, stolen labor, and manufactured myths. The anthem was never ours. It was a lullaby for whiteness, sung loud enough to drown out the screams.

They want us to sing the first verse. The safe one. The clean one. The part they teach in schools and blare through stadium speakers. The part that pretends this country was born from bravery not bondage.

But the verse they won’t sing?

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.

That was the third stanza. The one where Francis Scott Key made it plain: Freedom wasn’t for us. Death was. This anthem was never a promise, it was a threat.

So when I say, “O’er the land built on greed, and home of the enslaved,” I’m not being poetic. I’m being precise. This nation didn’t lose its way. It stayed on course.

Because what else do you call a country that celebrates independence while Black women die giving life, three times as often? That forces the poor to birth children they can’t feed, then shames them for needing help? That passed a “big, beautiful bill” to gut care, silence bodies, and call it progress?

Adriana Smith was brain dead. Her body kept alive not for her, but for the state. Even in death, she had work to do. Even in death, she was denied rest.

We are not free. And we never were. We were meant to labor, to obey, to disappear. To build the myth and bury the truth. To sing a song that never included our verse or our name.

But we remember. We remember the part they erased. And we reclaim the right to name this place for what it is.

Until next time, I wish you nothing but sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns, which are no less fictitious than the liberty this country pretends to extend to all.