“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black,
examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
In 1946, a prominent Lutheran pastor named Martin Niemöller wrote a famous poem about his experience living through the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. During Adolf Hitler’s early years in the 1920s and early 1930s, Niemöller “sympathized with many Nazi ideas and supported radically right-wing political movements,” according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
But once Hitler came to power in 1933, Niemöller began to realize the danger. He spoke out against Nazi control of the church and was imprisoned in concentration camps from 1938 to 1945, narrowly avoiding execution.
It’s considered dangerous in American politics to draw comparisons to Nazi Germany, and no serious person does so lightly. But in recent weeks we’ve seen evidence that Donald Trump’s own advisers view him as an unprecedented threat to democracy.
His former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, and his top general, Mark Milley, have both called him a “fascist.” Even his running mate, JD Vance, once called Trump “America’s Hitler.” And Trump, himself, has said that he needs the kind of generals that Hitler had.
Trump has tried to downplay the threat, but he has admitted that he would be a dictator “on day one,” would terminate the U.S. Constitution, and would fire Special Counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds” as his first act as president. This is a perilous moment for American democracy, and with that in mind, I offer this poem:
First they came for the old Black people
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t an old Black person
Then they came for the young Black people
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t a young Black person
Then they came for the Native Americans
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t Native American
Then they came for the Mexican Americans
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t Mexican American
Then they came for the Muslims
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t a Muslim
Then they came for the protesters
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t a protester
Then they came for the people with disabilities
And I didn’t speak up
Because I didn’t have a disability
Then they came for the Africans
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t African
Then they came for the Asian Americans
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t Asian American
Then they came for the Black women
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t a Black woman
Then they came for the rest of the women
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t a woman
Then they came for the trans people
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t trans.
Then they came for the Haitian Americans
And I didn’t speak up
Because I wasn’t Haitian
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak for me.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
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