06/06/2026
“Corridors” — A Chronological Poem of African‑American Integration in Transportation
In the war‑torn dawn of sixty‑two,
when the Union fought to make a nation new,
a pilot named Robert Smalls stole through the guns of Charleston Bay,
and steered the Planter toward the light of day.He stood on a deck where Black and white
worked side by side in the Navy’s fight —
a glimpse of a future the nation could be,
a promise afloat on a Civil War sea.
But when the war’s bright embers died,
the South reclaimed its old divide.
Jim Crow rose up with iron will,
and the corridors narrowed, dark and still.The rails that once rang with mixed‑crew might
were split again into “wrong” and “right.”
Yet in the 1870s, steam and fire
met the hands of John W. Thomas, rising higher —the first Black engineer to guide a train,a brief Reconstruction‑era gain.
Decades passed. The doors stayed closed.
But war returned, and the nation chose
to call on every hand it had.
And in Pearl Harbor’s morning, fierce and sad,
Dorie Miller seized a gun and stood his ground,
and sent a Japanese plane spinning down.His courage cracked the Navy’s wall, though segregation still gripped all.
Then came 1942, a turning tide —
when Hugh Mulzac refused to hide.
He took the helm of a Liberty ship,
but only if every man aboard could grip
the ropes and rails as equals there —
Black, white, immigrant — a crew made fair.
The Booker T. Washington sailed that year,
the first integrated merchant sphere.
In ’46, on a Virginia road,
Irene Morgan bore the load
of saying “No” to a Jim Crow seat,
and carried her case to the Court’s high seat.
She broke the chains on interstate ways,
though Southern states stalled for many days.
In ’55, on a Montgomery bus,
Rosa Parks made history of all of us.
Her quiet stand, her steady grace,
opened the local public space.
In ’61, the Riders came —
Black and white in a common aim.
They rode through fire, fists, and flame
to force the law to match its name.
And in ’62, the Navy’s vow
was finally honored on a captain’s brow.
Samuel Gravely took command at last,
the segregated Navy a thing of the past.The skies were last to yield their bars —
cockpits, cabins, airport yards.
But by ’64, the laws ran true,
and pilots of color finally flew.And far beyond America’s shore, a new horizon opened more.
In 2016, on a Windstar sea,
Belinda Bennett stood proud and free —
the first Black captain of a cruise ship’s span,
commanding waters that circle man.
From Smalls’s daring Civil War flight
to Bennett’s bridge in the ocean’s light,
the corridors widened, closed, and widened again —
each pioneer clearing a path for the next to begin.
Across rail and road, through sky and foam,
they carried a nation toward its better home.
