If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
What if we uninvented the light?
If Lewis Latimer gathered his filament
No more glow for you.
Progress would squint in the dark
Afraid of what it couldn’t see.
What if Granville T. Woods gave the signal
For his signals to come home?
Distance would become danger again
Time would forget how to arrive on schedule.
What if we uninvented the traffic light?
Garrett Morgan would tuck yellow
Red and green back into his pocket.
Intersections would argue endlessly,
Patience would never learn to take turns.
What if Madam C.J. Walker
Unmixed her formulas?
Beauty would be a privilege
Instead of a right?
Confidence would shrink at the mirror
Entrepreneurship will sail away.
What if George Washington Carver
Took crop rotation back with him?
Fields would starve
And economies would crack
Even more.
Imagine the world
Without Black brilliance
Braided into its bones.
The world already tried to live without it.
And history shows
It couldn’t.
A TEACHERble Moment 
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