Grace Towns Hamilton: The Unbroken Line

Lyrics

Grace.
Grace Towns Hamilton.
October tenth, Nineteen-oh-seven.
The air on Parsons Street was already turning.
A new line being drawn.
Your father, George Alexander Towns, he walked with giants.
Talked with Du Bois at Fisk.
Heard the hum of a different future.
Your mother, Nellie Mae, a teacher's hands.
They wove the first thread of you at Atlanta University.
Not a break in the stitch.
Just a straight, strong seam.
And you carried that line.
The unbroken line.
Out of Sweet Auburn, past the Royal Peacock,
Up the hill to the Capitol's gilded dome.
Grace Towns Hamilton.
The first one.
Nineteen sixty-five.
You were the voice they sent to speak in rooms that were built to keep you silent.
They tell me they wouldn't let you sit in the front row.
Not at first.
As if a desk could stop a river.
As if polished wood could hold back the will of an entire street.
The will of Auburn Avenue, packed into your sensible shoes,
Clicking on their marble floors.
A sound they hadn't heard before.
And you carried that line.
The unbroken line.
Out of Sweet Auburn, past the Atlanta Life building,
Up the hill to the Capitol's gilded dome.
Grace Towns Hamilton.
The first one.
Nineteen sixty-five.
You were the voice they sent to speak in rooms that were built to keep you silent.
Nineteen years.
The rustle of papers.
Prison reform.
Fair housing.
A shield for the buyer.
Your words, a careful architecture against the bulldozers
That took Buttermilk Bottom,
That sliced us with the Connector.
You stood in the breach. You held the line.
From sixty-five to eighty-four.
A long, unbroken thread.
Still pulling us forward.
Grace.
The line holds.