For Young Blacks, the Lost Generation (Newsweek, 8/14/78) (1 of 3)

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For Young Blacks, the Lost Generation (Newsweek, 8/14/78) You, Larry, who almost threw the Atlanta bottle at your long-gone father, remember Gambia? the blue-eyed toubob there who threw the furtive stone that bloody bathed your father's far forgotten kin, that wordless prisoner whose fevered flesh was all the slaver's skill could chain, whose will was vomit held against his teeth through death on death across the sea until the savage shore? Rainsoaked now, from walking long to find the job that wasn't there , you'd say "That old-time stuffs so long ago it don't mean shit to me" ; but, said beneath your breath at least, it says your father stroked your brow at times upon his knee, where bone to bone like drumbeats through the trees some message went that held its way across the stone-and-bottle path the toubob centuries have thrown for Black feet: yours, your father's, and your unremembered kin's. You, Gary, writing your Rosetta from a Philadelphia jail, "responsible for what I did," you say, what did you do? lookout for the killer three, peeping through the iron grate while they took turns to stab old Drugstore Cohen hanging from the metal shelf pleading 'Tm your friend." $128 divided by 4 leaves 32, leaves Cohen dead,

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Final Draft Poem written by Emanuel in 1978 captures feelings of disillusionment among elders regarding the prospects for Black teenagers due to industrialization and technological advancement. Page 1.

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Download image “For Young Blacks, the Lost Generation (Newsweek, 8/14/78) (1 of 3)”
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  • container title
    James A. Emanuel papers
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    James A. Emanuel
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    James A. Emanuel Estate
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    BOX 4 FOLDER 27, "The Chopping Block (Selected Poems), draft, 1988 (2 of 2)
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    James A. Emanuel Estate
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    James A. Emanuel Estate
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    FInal