The Great John Brown Russworm

Liberia, 1829

A man sits by a lantern

Quill in hand

Pages laid out.

This quill was no ordinary quill

It was one John enchanted

To move his words

Through generations of

His descendants.

John wrote with precision

Tipped the quill in Black ink

Wrote of his past

In Jamaica and

Maine:

His father’s rejection,

And his stepmother’s kindness,

His time at Bowdoin College

And why he left

His disdain towards America,

And his hope for a new start in

Libera.

Preserved for his descendants

Especially one in particular:

His great great great great great

Granddaughter

Who would one day write a poem

To honor him

And tell his story—

How he was born to a black woman

In Jamaica

And his father decided, in reluctance,

To claim him.

That his stepmother loved him

Like one of her own,

And made sure he had an education

To rival his half siblings;

That he went to college

At Bowdion

And felt lost and hopeless

In a sea of white priviledge;

That he started to write

In a paper called

The Freedom Journal,

But left after two years

Fed up with abolitionist dreams.

Advocating for another solution—

To just leave.

And so he did.

He went back to his people

In Africa he thrived

He created a school system

And started a new paper

Called The Liberian Herald.

He preached pan-Africanism

Long before the word existed,

Bringing the Black Americans

together

With the native Liberians.

And as he wrote his life story

The past

Present

And future—

He made sure she knew

The power of her ancestors.