The Undefeated

“The Undefeated” is, more than anything else, a poem of empowerment and celebration. This is evident from the title of the poem. While so much art, commentary, and discussion about African American history focuses on oppression, subjugation, discrimination, and pain, Alexander focuses on this idea of “the undefeated.” This is a declaration at the beginning of the poem that regardless of all the pain and suffering Black people have faced in the history of America, they have not been defeated. Alexander shows this by highlighting the figures in Black history who have risen above circumstance and left a lasting legacy; those who have shown strength, courage, beauty, and humanity in the face of countless obstacles.

This hopeful approach does not disregard history or shy away from the atrocities that have scarred America, though. Instead, Alexander includes the atrocities of slavery, segregation, racial hatred, police brutality, and discrimination just enough to remind readers of the obstacles the people he is celebrating faced and continue to face. He also includes these things not to focus on the violence or the perpetrators of that violence but to focus on the people who were victims of the violence. Alexander does not want their lives to be forgotten or erased, and he doesn’t want their connection to historical moments to erase their autonomy and the memory of them as people. This is apparent in the images of Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair, the four Black girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963. It’s also apparent in the image of victims of police brutality, where there are images of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and Trayvon Martin.

Of course, this isn’t always possible. For example, early in the poem, Alexander contrasts “[t]he ones who survived / America / by any means necessary” with “[a]nd the ones who didn’t” (Lines 6-9). For those who didn’t, there is no accompanying image—just an empty page. This is similar to later in the poem when Alexander first mentions the unspeakable. Here, he includes an image of naked Black bodies connected together as if as one. The image harkens back to 17th and 18th century depictions of slave ships with masses of Black people lined up next to one another without any distinguishing features or individuality.

The effect of these images (or lack of an image) and the lines accompanying them is they illustrate the vast suffering, loss, and injustice that Black Americans have dealt with throughout American history. However, these images and this focus on loss do not define the poem. Instead, these are battles the poem argues the Black community has defeated. In this way, the poem recontextualizes Black history from how it is usually taught and thought about. While most history classes in America focus solely on these atrocities when discussing Black history, Alexander does not lead with them, and they do not occupy the majority of his poem; instead, he focuses on those people who overcame the atrocities so many Americans first think of when they think of Black history.

This is important because it allows contemporary readers to do two things at once: It allows readers to understand and acknowledge the horrors of the past while at the same time showing readers that those horrors do not solely define people. This is a difficult balance to strike because for so long in America, Black history has either been defined solely by these terrible things, or the truth of these things has been hidden, minimalized, and suppressed. Alexander is trying to both shine a spotlight on these things while also not letting them be the entire story.

One way Alexander does this is through his focus on empowering adjectives. These adjectives drive the poem forward and act as the poetic focus of the entire poem, and these adjectives do not follow the trend of adjectives that have traditionally been used to describe Black history, whether they be racist adjectives or adjectives commonly used, such as oppressed, enslaved, or subjugated. Instead of words like these, Alexander uses words like unforgettable, undeniable, unflappable, sophisticated, unafraid, audacious, righteous, unlimited, unbelievable, unbending, underdogs, and undefeated. It is no coincidence that most of these words begin with the prefix un-. This is more recontextualization on Alexander’s part. Whereas for so much of American history, the white power structure of America has deemed the stories of Black Americans as forgettable, deniable, afraid, limited, and defeated, Alexander rejects these notions. He takes back the way society defines history and culture through language and applies language to figures of strength, hope, and success.

This is successful for many reasons, but the most important has to do with the target audience of the poem. The history of African Americans is increadibly complicated, but Alexander is able to express both the history of atrocity and the history of success in a simple way. Through his use of precise diction, repetition, and by combining images with simple, declarative lines, he is able to properly contextualize the complicated legacy of African American history in a way that young people can grasp and understand. His goal in writing the poem was to both empower young Black voices and shine a light on the truth of African American history, and he does that in a way that is accessible and powerful.