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I'm now going to read
"Peggy in Killing."

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Now this is--

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I guess some of you are
aware of Toni Morrison's book

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Beloved in which she used this
slave narrative as the basis

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for her book.

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As I was doing research on
this woman Margaret Garner,

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I found another narrative.

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There were about three
or four narratives on her

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but the story is this.

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She escaped from her
plantation and she

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got on a boat that was going
to take her to Philadelphia.

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But the boat had an accident.

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And in the water, another
boat came and picked her up.

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But in the meantime, she
drowned two of her children.

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In those days I don't know how
much you know about slavery but

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they were plenty--

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some of the mothers who
had killed their children

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rather than have
them become slaves.

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Terrible stories of
how they did that.

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But terrible stories of
how they saw the murders

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and the life of a slave
for their children

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even worse and Peggy
was one of them.

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She to me is an archetype.

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And she will give you--

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you will hear her
exercise herself

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and she will give
you a definition

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between murder and killing.

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And in the end she will
redeem herself in her own way.

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She's not Medea.

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Somebody told me she was Medea.

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I don't believe
that because Medea

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killed out of a kind of
anger and viciousness.

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This woman is not doing that.

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Traveling.

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They done found me, Lord,
they done found me again.

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I'm dead and they don't know it.

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Sometimes I don't either.

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Except the spirit come creeping
in my body like hot fire

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and I burn and burn all
inside turned to dust blow way

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out over they heads when they
finds me crying in a sack.

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I listens and listens.

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I'm traveling in my
bones and the spirits

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swooshes out before I get
the chance to say amen.

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Oh the wind, the sea,
I'm dead on this boat.

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Go away, go away nigger
they say so I go.

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Don't touch me yet.

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Got to get home to my mother.

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Ain't that what
the Lord say when

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he rise from the dead
going home to his mother.

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Well, somebody row
this boat out of hell.

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Can't be no slave forever,
not me and my children.

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All pretty and soft all wet and
they skin moist like the sea

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air they've been burying me in.

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Can't be no slave ever, make way
Lord, here I come, here I am.

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They say boat they put
me on with my children

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because I tried to escape from
the dark breaths, the glories,

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hallelujah, they fine
houses and sweet fields they

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murders, murders, murders.

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That coffin stenching
and they smiles.

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They come here Peggy
dress my little one then

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fix her something to eat,
maybe some cake and milk.

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And mine sitting on
the stairs in cold

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and the dark waiting to do
some waiting on, waiting

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for the milk to sour,
the cake to crumble.

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Hearing all this without
a word, a whimper.

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Eyes freezing in their dreams,
hungers freezing in they

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dark, taking they dreams to
supper like candles melting.

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After a while, no more light.

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They walking softly, making
sure they seen and not heard

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and they dreams screaming
in they bright soft eyes.

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My soft little
ones, my children.

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My John and Mary and Lottie,
brown and golden-black

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listening in the dark, bright in
they black but it'd be a gift.

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Out of they misery
I become blacker

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than the skin of
a tree in the rain

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and I be rooted in
the rich black Earth.

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Out of me flies the swallow.

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Lord, I'm here because I
went with my little ones.

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We's all going to
something better,

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there has to be something better
and my death gives me a chance.

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Can't be no slave forever.

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Oh Lord, I've got
wisdom and hope

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and I don't think about
it, don't believe it,

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don't not believe it
don't carry them around

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in my misery like sick animals.

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Got to go, got to live inside
death in the wheelchair

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if I must there be some
energy left in that.

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Caught me in Philadelphia,
put me in a boat down,

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down in the hollows of
its ribs in the hollering

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of the sea with my three little
ones crying to me no, I lies.

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They be silent, no tears, no
murmurs, no moans, no sighs.

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And I knew then
that death give me

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a chance a great salvation,
a fine, early night.

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So I waits in the
dark and dampness.

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I sat there till my skin broke
and I held my children close.

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But that boat wasn't meant
for nothing but glory.

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And when it crashed
into the sea I

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entered that water like
I was being baptized.

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So my John's head
stretched among the waves

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and near him Mary and
near her Lottie laughing.

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Oh Lord what a sight,
baptized to the death.

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I denounce you, Satan.

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I denounce this unfree calling.

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I denounce shackles,
bondage, escape, darkness,

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the quiet of the pain in
my throat when I scream

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for nothing, nothing at all.

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When I watch my children sit on
stairwells in the dark and ice

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forms in their mouths.

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I denounce the evil
of remembering.

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I denounce pieces of
property, pounds of pain.

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Nothing be free but the misery.

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My hands over their heads
was such a little matter.

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Just taking them on them
putting them there for the water

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to purify, for their own
blooming under the sea.

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Lottie she kicked a bit but
that be all, it be over.

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They be flowers
under the water now.

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Lord, how cleansed
I be when the water

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come rushing beating against
my bosom through me to them.

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I feel like I be
giving suck and the sea

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be my milk and my health and
babies be fed and wholesome

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and warm forever.

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I'm here now in this
place don't know it

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but it moves and they'd be
water about, another boat.

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I can see a tiny window but the
light hurts and wants the dark.

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Now and then some peoples
come and look at me,

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ask me if I wants
to eat, leaves me

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some corn bread and cold tea.

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Be crates and chunks
here like the other boat.

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I think we've been moving.

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They found me in
the water I reckon,

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brought me again
in a backward time.

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I'm dead.

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I know it because I'm happy.

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The children are flowers now
baptized in joy and hope.

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I shiver when I think
of their beauty.

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Can't cry because I be dead.

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This whole tarp round
me, my flesh rotting,

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my bones drying out, my eyes
moving through some kind

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of cheesecloth like a fog.

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I'm going to reach out
now soon, so my death

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will stay away from my babies.

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Can't upset them now.

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They's pure.

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And these ghosts that come
and watch me in the night?

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I'll sing to them, like a star.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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