THE LIONS DEN

THE LEGEND OF SARAH BARTMANN

And they set out to make your thickness the curse... Parading you through the streets as if you were a specimen in a zoo.
The men turned on gazed upon you lustfully for you were their property now... They would have you by force night after night as your king stood idly by.
Whipped into a parody of himself  as he emansculated cried.
His woman's disdain of his strength grew strong for it was a curse to her sons and she set out to create the ideal black man.
Told her sons to be humble and subservient as she looked out the window at her man swinging from a tree charred and smoking in the dawn.
He an abject lesson on having pride in who we were.
She loved her boys and though strong of body they became weak of mind.
The woman of them sitting by and resenting your presence... The fullness of you.
Happy hair and big lips... She called you ugly and flaunted her prosperity at you generation after generation till you hated yourself.
Yet your beauty still became the icon.
That had to be stopped for you regaining consciousness had the ability to crush oppressive regimes... Tear down the walls of the old and modern system Babylon.
They sold you lighter skin and straighter hair.
They sold you blue eyes and butt reductions.
They told you how good you would look if only you looked like them, all the while laughing cause black women ain't got blond hair unless its bleached by the sun.
Hilly Berry and Nikki Menage.
Lol Kim lookin like Chuckys nightmare on Elm street.
I like you just the way you are...
Thick black and deliciously strong.
I see your pain and will pop shots in the night and the day to rectify this situation.
My companion, my soul, my being.

JERALD HAMZAHFARUQ MURPHY

This is just a brief summation of Sarah Bartman. I would encourage you to follow up and read more.

"When 20 year old Sara Baartman got on a boat that was to take her from Cape Town to London in 1810, she could not have known that she would never see her home again. Nor, as she stood on the deck and saw her homeland disappear behind her could she have known that she would become the icon of racial inferiority and black female sexuality for the next 100 years.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SARA BAARTMAN is the fascinating story of this Khoi Khoi woman who was taken from South Africa, and then exhibited as a freak across Britain. The image and idea of "The Hottentot Venus" swept through British popular culture. A court battle waged by abolitionists to free her from her exhibitors failed.

In 1814 she was taken to France, and became the object of scientific and medical research that formed the bedrock of European ideas about black female sexuality. She died the next year. But even after her death, Sara Baartman remained an object of imperialist scientific investigation. In the name of Science, her sexual organs and brain were displayed in the Musee de l'Homme in Paris until as recently as 1985."