Declaration

“Declaration” is a short lyric poem with 17 lines of text and several empty white space lines representing lines from the “Declaration of Independence” erased by the poet. Some lines of text also contain spaces that bring specific attention to the words from the original document that the poet kept for their poignancy to the struggle of Black Americans. The whole poem is printed in italics because it quotes directly from a historical document as its primary source.

In the “Declaration of Independence,” the primary “he” that the document addresses is the King of England in July 1776, George III. Likewise, “Declaration” refers to a “he” never explicitly defined. This person could be Thomas Jefferson—the primary author of the original “Declaration”—a wealthy landowner from Virginia who enslaved people. Jefferson’s role as an establishment figure keeping the status quo of slavery in the United States contrasts with his words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Jefferson, “Declaration of Independence”). These fundamental rights were not available to much of the population in the early United States.