Saida Agostini | georgia is a lesson in how to steal prayers or prathia hall becomes martin luther king’s ghostwriter

June 19, 2024

Saida Agostini

georgia is a lesson in how to steal prayers or prathia hall becomes martin luther king’s ghostwriter

in sleep I taste the ash of kingdoms everything is on fire the bud of trees the salted ground white men hooded in the cover of night we know this nocturne see god above in an open red door crowned by stars the cry of wood crashing fire takes everything the flesh of my hands prayers a child’s face no one will come to save us I dream of love I dream of black women dying and coming back home god running through the halls with food prepared by her own hands saying come come I’ve made a place for you me standing by this divine table I dream of georgia red dirt and flame mt olive embraced in shuddering air the congregation braced outside I dream of ash I dream of the bible those who damned us to die and I say this god send me back I have tithed my whole life to sharecroppers given one tenth of my breath blood and coins to celestial robber barons let me say this I know to survive I know how to give to sow a hungry ground with spilt blood seed a land with constant black penance for the sin of desire I know the weight of cotton like I know debt or taxes or the wages of sin I know what it is to love a thief to love the promise of heaven better than you love yourself I’m tired of chasing heaven the night those white men burnt the church down in a circle of gorgeous flame I tithed again looked to the moon its sweet dull shining face and put my heart on its divine scale I’m tired of only finding freedom in dreams I want my heaven in waking hours

Prathia Hall was a Black woman preacher who led a prayer group in the ashes of Mt Olive’s Church in Georgia, the day after its burning on September 11, 1962. Martin Luther King was inthe audience, and used her prayer’s refrain “I have a dream” as the basis of his I Have a Dream speech. I never knew that the actual structure of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech came from Prathia Hall’s prayers, during a 1962 rally in Sasser, Georgia. I imagined her, standing in the midst of Mt Olive Baptist Church’s ashes, talking to God, without knowing how her prayer would travel across the world – but credited to someone else. I think of this often, all the prayers Black women and femmes make, and how often they are anthologized, celebrated and honored in another’s name. This poem represents an accounting of sorts, an attempt to remember these prayers as they were born.