The Historic New Orleans Collection commissioned me to compose an original work called:
“Erase Tyranny of Today,” written in response to “Tyrants before the Judgment of History” (1862), by an anonymous author. In Civil War–era New Orleans, Afro-Creole newspapers run by free people of color published conversations hidden in French-language poems. Poets wrote back and forth to each other about civil rights, current events, friendship, and love.
In 2020, The Historic New Orleans Collection published "Afro-Creole Poetry in French" to bring these conversations back to life, in the original French, and in English translations by Clint Bruce. New Orleans poets were invited to choose one of these 19th-century poems and write their own 21st-century responses. Here it is:
