Poet Bimpé Fageyinbo delivers a powerful ode to the memory and spirit of Harriet Tubman while underscoring the timeless urgency of real freedom for Black people, then and now.
LIBERATION: Poetry Films Inspired by Harriet Tubman is a powerful series of short films inspired by the legacy of Harriet Tubman, in celebration of the new Harriet Tubman Monument in Newark.
Poem Written & Performed by Bimpé Fageyinbo
Directed by Yuri Alves
Produced: Igor Alves
Director of Photography: Gabriel Kurzlop
Sound Recording: Victor Buitrago, Andre Marques
Edited by: Yuri Alves, Victor Buitrago
Colorist: Gabriel Kurzlop
Assistant Editor: Andre Marques
Sound Design: Alexandre Ajuda
Post-Production Assistant: Gissel Romero
Production Company: DreamPlay Media
LIBERATION: Poetry Films Inspired by Harriet Tubman
Special Thanks: The City of Newark – Division of Arts and Cultural Affairs, Express Newark – Community Media Center, Shine Portrait Studio, Rutgers University-Newark, The Newark Museum of Art, Newark Public Library, Newark Arts.
Made Possible By: The Harriet Tubman Monument Project, funded by The City of Newark, New Jersey, Audible, Mellon Foundation, and supported by local residents in partnership with Newark Arts, The Newark City Parks Foundation, The Newark Museum of Art, Newark Public Library and DreamPlay Media.
For more: visitharriettubmansquare.com
#LIBERATIONFILMS #HARRIETTUBMANMONUMENT
About Bimpé Fageyinbo
Bimpé Fageyinbo is a Nigerian artist—a poet, filmmaker, and photographer. Her current work utilizes poetry, film, prose, and documentary photography to answer our most profound inner questions, exploring issues related to race, culture, faith, introspection, and identity. Fageyinbo’s literary and visual storytelling is notably poetic, experimental, and conceptual—organically weaving the human experience with social anthropological perspectives.
Follow Bimpé Fageyinbo at instagram.com/bybimpe
TRANSCRIPT
You are a fight so worthy that one woman would risk freedom
for freedom
This young woman who was Counted out and scarred,
Marked with A scar on the head,
Perhaps a symbol
a sign of a 6th sense
the kind of sense so divinely foolish
it was wisdom
I mean she couldn’t read a map but she could read the
heavens…
And well who needs a map when the stars answer to you
Araminta Ross, knew how to be abased and knew when it was
time to abound
SHE, one young Black woman but a majority… set out as
Araminta came back a Moses… because that’s what freedom
will do, call you by a new name.
So this Majority
walked
Maryland to Delaware 197 miles
Delaware to Pennsylvania, 94 miles
that’s 291 miles from who you thought I was to who I say I
am-
Harriet Tubman
Fought a fight so worthy she risked freedom for freedom
She held both Minty and Harriet in the palms of each hand
Put them together and prayed her way through pitch black
valleys, shadows, death,
rivers, as deep as the many souls we’ve lost in water
Don’t you know that every ocean floor from here to Africa carries the souls of
Our family past
Araminta Ross walked THROUGH waters
baptized with each step.
One step closer
One step closer to the freedoms she said that she would DIE to see
One step closer to Harriet
Because God
It’s not how you start the race it’s how you finish it
Araminta started it
but Harriet, Harriet would be the one to finish it
But I think she was always Harriet (if you understand what
I’m saying)
Jesus didn’t become the Messiah until He rose but he was
He was always the Messiah
So she went on to make it or die
To remain or to become
She made it
She knew that there was A home for her
And that home was not where she was going, but rather
what she could be when she got there
BUT NOT alone
A fight so worthy that she would risk HER freedom for
yours
so she made no less than 13 trips BACK to Egypt
because she knew what God could be done once could be done twice
A fight so worthy she would risk freedom for freedom again and
Again
Harriet Tubman didn’t know what would become of Black liberty but she left
a legacy that told us that in our own lifetime, that we are worthy of
the fight.
I know that we’re treading on hope and the water feels low from Emmett Till to
Tyree Nichols, yet in our own lifetimes, we are still worthy of the fight.
She left a legacy that told us that in our own lifetimes
That we must live like we have the right to.
A fight so worthy you would risk freedom for freedom
A people so worthy
A people so worthy
A people so worthy
A people so worthy
A people so worthy
A people so worthy
A people so worthy
Of a fight
that yes may last a lifetime… and yet while you fight, you better
live
like you have
the right to.
DREAMPLAY FILMS
Original, award-winning narrative and documentary films.
