Jake Adam York, a poet relentlessly dedicated to the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement, wrote this poem titled "Grace": "The smoke from the grill/ is the smell of my father coming home/ from the furnace and the tang/ of vinegar and char is the smell of Birmingham, the smell/ of coming home, of history, redolent/as the salt of black-and-white film/ when I unwrap the sandwich/ from the wax-paper the wax-paper / crackling like the cold grass/ along the Selma to Montgomery road,/ like the foil that held Medgar's last meal, a square of tin/ that is just the ghost of that barbecue/ I can imagine to my tongue/ when I stand at the pit with my brother/ and think of all the hands and mouths/ and breaths of air that sharpened/ this flavor and handed it down to us."

It's been 50 years since the Civil Rights Act and the country is witnessing a renewed attack on voting rights, the re-segregation of public schools, gentrification, mass incarceration and entrenched job discrimination.

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University of Puget Sound organizations Black Student Union, African American Studies, Resident Student Association, and Spoken Word and Poetry Club host a "Civil Rights and Peace" poetry reading in celebration of Black History Month.

"CIVIL RIGHTS AND PEACE" POETRY READING, 5:30-7 p.m., Tahoma Room, Commencement Hall, University of Puget Sound campus, 1500 N. Warner, Tacoma, free admission, 253.879.3100