Black History Month arrived this year in the wake of yet another horrifying instance of police brutality against a black man, and I can’t stop thinking about all the black youth in our country who—generations after the end of slavery and decades after legal desegregation—live in fear every single day. Fear of driving a car, of walking to school, of entering a grocery store, or of just being who they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Until all our country’s children are scared only of shadows on the wall and noises down the hall, we must surely mourn this month just as fully as we celebrate it.

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me

by Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all

Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all

Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don't frighten me at all

Dragons breathing flame
On my counterpane
That doesn't frighten me at all.

I go boo
Make them shoo
I make fun
Way they run
I won't cry
So they fly
I just smile
They go wild

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Tough guys fight
All alone at night
Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Panthers in the park
Strangers in the dark
No, they don't frighten me at all.

That new classroom where
Boys all pull my hair
(Kissy little girls
With their hair in curls)
They don't frighten me at all.

Don't show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I'm afraid at all
It's only in my dreams.

I've got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all
Not at all
Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.