No Justice, No Peace - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiements (feat. Author Lovely Banks & Rachele Roman)

From the nowhere of the ghetto and the nowhere of utopia
A chorus of unnamed women search
Defined by tumult, vulgar collectivism, and anarchy
Bereft of beauty and extravagant in display of it
The outsiders and the uplifter
Fail to capture it
Fail to get it right
The slum, she is a woman
Intoxicated with freedom
And she has a name and a life that exceeds the frame
In which she is captured
She is Ida B Wells
Shocking white women with her presence
And imposing intimate contact
She is Mamie Shepherd
So lovely and disarming a weapon
Filled with desire
Refusing to be governed
She is Gladys Bentley
Flamboyant womanizer
Famous for risque acts,
Dirty lyrics,
And elegant tuxedos
She is Esther Brown
Not forgetting for a moment
That the law was designed to keep her in place
Refusing to live in its clauses and parentheses
The anarchy of colored girls assembling
Singing revolution in a minor key
Delivers a lecture on free love
The beauty of the chorus
Opens the way
For riotous black girls
Troublesome women
And queer radicals, all

Written by:
Rebekah Gordon

Publisher:
Lyrics © O/B/O DistroKid

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