Chaotic Times
To call the forty years between 1940 and 1980 tumultuous would be an understatement. During the time two wars were being fought, one abroad and one on the home front: the war in Vietnam and the war for equal rights for the black community. Voices such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were at the forefront of this movement, but other voices rose out of this time as well. These voices expose that of the hatred for war, inability to cope with changing world circumstances, and whether or not to create change through means of peace or war. For the sake of keeping the timeline format, these dates will be in chronological order, but the voices and excerpts used in this timeline will have an omnipresent quality. This quality will reflect the disarray of the time, and cover the many voices that rose out of the fray.

Voices of the home pt. I
1945 "Kitchenette Building" - Gwendolyn Brooks

"We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. 'Dream' makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like 'rent,' 'feeding a wife,' 'satisfying a man.'"

Voices of the home pt. II
1953 Ch. 8 Maud Martha - Gwendolyn Brooks

"Papa was to have gone that noon, during his lunch hour, to the office of the Home Owners' Loan. If he had not succeeded in getting another extension, they would be leaving this house in which they had lived for more that fourteen years.....'We'll be moving into a a nice flat somewhere,' said Mama...Those flats, as the girls and Mama knew well, were burdens on wages twice the size of Papa's. This was not mentioned now."

The voice of those who wish to escape - inability to cope pt. I
1961 "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" - Amiri Baraka

"Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edge silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...
Things have come to that."
The voice of those who followed the Preacher Man - The loss of the meek one
1968 "In Memoriam: Martin Luther King Jr." - June Jordan

"honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born"

The voice of those who wish to escape - inability to cope pt. II
1969 "Summer Words of a Sistuh Addict" - Sonia Sanchez

"the first day i shot dope
was on a sunday.
i had just come
home from church
got mad at my motha
cuz she got mad at me. u dig?
went out. shot up
behind a feelen against her.
it felt good.
gooder than dooing it. yeah."

The voice of those who followed the cry for war -The loss of the gritty one
1970 "For Malcolm X" - Margaret Walker
"You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak...
All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums
Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie,
Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns,
Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan"

The voices in the streets pt. I
1978 "Poem about Police Violence" - June Jordan

"I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rabid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle (don't
you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue and
scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again
(again)"

The voices in the streets pt. II
1980 "Poem about My Rights" - June Jordan

"I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.
and the problems of South Africa and the problems
of Exxon Corporation  and the problems of white
America in general and the problems of the teachers
and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social
workers and my particular Mom and Dad / I am very
familiar with the problems because the problems
turn out to be
me
I am a history of rape
I am a history of the rejection of who I am
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
my self"