Henrietta Lacks (1920-51) is now known
as the black woman whose cervical cancer cells
miraculously multiplied in a laboratory
more than all other cancer cells did,
long after her life had ended.
Now as then, what black lives offered
to the whole of (white) humanity
goes uncredited. Even when (white) history
can be rewritten to properly credit black folk
for the contribution their lives and deaths made
the credit seems so long after the fact
that it can only be seen as inadequate.
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