They Made the Warning a Weapon
In 1938, Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, walked into a recording studio in New York City with his twelve-string guitar. He was 50 years old and had been to prison twice. He knew exactly how the system worked.
He recorded “Scottsboro Boys,” a song about nine Black teenagers falsely accused of rape in Alabama and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. Some would die in prison. One would be shot by a sheriff years later. The last wouldn’t be pardoned until 2013—seventy years after his conviction.
Lead Belly had met the Scottsboro Boys. He knew what happened to Black people in Alabama who weren’t paying attention. The state would kill you for a white woman’s lie. Mobs gathered outside courthouses. Trials were over in hours. Evidence didn’t matter. The system was the weapon.
Then he spoke directly into the microphone, his voice urgent and plain:
“I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there; best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”
Stay woke.
It wasn’t poetry. It wasn’t a hashtag. It was a survival warning.
For decades, the phrase traveled quietly through Black communities. It meant what it meant in 1938: consciousness as survival. Awareness as armor against a system designed to destroy you. By 2014, after Ferguson, after Michael Brown’s body lay in the street for four hours, “stay woke” became a rallying cry. The warning remained unchanged: police violence, state violence, the machinery grinding on. Stay alert. Stay alive.
Then they stole it.
The Inversion
Donald Trump made “anti-woke” his rallying cry. “You know what woke means?” he told a crowd. “It means you’re a loser. Everything woke turns to shit.”
Ron DeSantis branded Florida as “where woke goes to die.”
A survival warning became a slur. But here’s what makes it different from regular political theft: they didn’t just mock the word. They made it law.
In 2022, DeSantis signed the “Stop WOKE Act.” It made teaching about systemic racism in schools and workplaces illegal, enforceable with lawsuits and penalties. Federal judges called it “positively dystopian.” The law stands anyway.
In 2025, Trump signed executive orders banning “woke AI” from federal contracts and eliminating DEI programs across federal agencies. This week he raged on Truth Social about states embedding “DEI ideology into AI models.”
“Anti-woke” has become federal policy with enforcement mechanisms, legal penalties, and the power to destroy careers and institutions.
A Black survival warning about state violence now provides legal justification FOR state exclusion.
Power at Work
Kristen Gardner Beal walked into a large bank in Richmond with a business plan for a wine shop. She was 35. She and her business partner had projections, financials, everything the bank required. They asked for $150,000.
The bank advanced them through every stage. Review after review. Each time, another hoop. Each time, they jumped through it. Final lending stage.
Then the bank said no.
No explanation that would hold up in court. No specific reason she could argue against. Just no.
So she went to Bridging Virginia, a community development financial institution—a CDFI. Congress created these lenders in 1994 to serve low-income, rural, and underserved communities. Places where traditional banks won’t go. They gave her $100,000.
Today, Penny’s Wine Shop generates $600,000 a year. Employs nine people. Exists because a lender of last resort took a risk a traditional bank wouldn’t.
This year, the Trump administration withheld $324 million appropriated by Congress for CDFIs. The official justification: these institutions promote “gender extremism,” “climate radicalism,” a “partisan agenda.”
They classified serving the underserved as woke.
In practice, that category now swallows everything at the margins: Black borrowers, immigrant neighborhoods, rural towns, anyone whose stability depends on something more than inherited wealth.
Scroll any major anti-woke feed and you’ll see how wide the category runs. They don’t bother with the ordinary losses. They chase the spectacle—crime clips, outrage bait, anything with heat. What disappears in the noise are the people who never make the timeline at all: the business that never opens, the loan that dies in review, the clinic that closes without announcement. The stories that don’t trend are the ones where the real damage sits.
Bridging Virginia is now sharing staff and rent with another nonprofit to survive. Other CDFIs are scrubbing their websites, removing any language that could be “interpreted as DEI.” One Seattle organization submitted documents and website copy to every federal agency it receives grants from, preemptively, hoping not to get flagged.
“We know who we need to serve,” the CEO said.
They just can’t say it anymore.
The Desecration
If staying alert to state violence is “woke,” what do you call refusing to stay alert?
If teaching about systemic racism is “extremism,” what is systemic racism itself?
If funding lenders who serve the underserved is a “partisan agenda,” what is defunding them?
A country always tells you who it fears by what it tries to silence.
Lead Belly warned in 1938: Stay alert, the state will kill you if you’re not paying attention.
In 2025, the state made the warning illegal. They never use the word “ban.” The word is “eliminate.” “Not consistent with federal priorities” means forbidden. Making awareness illegal means defunding every institution that practices it. This is policy.
This isn’t culture war. This is desecration: taking a man’s attempt to keep his people alive and using it to justify removing their protections. Armor became the target. A warning about state violence now serves as the excuse for state violence.
Huddie Ledbetter recorded that warning 87 years ago. His voice is still here, preserved on aluminum discs, archived in the Smithsonian. He was 50 years old. He had been to prison twice. He understood exactly how power works. He was trying to keep people alive.
Now the government he warned about has made his warning illegal.
The warning was always true. That’s why they had to stop it.
Stay woke.
Lead Belly & “Stay Woke”
“What Are the Origins of the Term ‘Stay Woke’?” Snopes, June 22, 2023 https://www.snopes.com/articles/464795/origins-term-stay-woke/
“Black History and ‘Stay Woke,’ a story,” African American Registry, July 8, 2025 https://aaregistry.org/story/black-history-and-stay-woke-a-story/
Lead Belly, Wikipedia (for biographical details) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly
Scottsboro Boys
“Alabama Pardons Scottsboro Boys After 82 Years,” NBC News, November 21, 2013 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/alabama-pardons-scottsboro-boys-after-82-years-flna2d11634806
“Scottsboro Boys,” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottsboro_Boys
“Scottsboro Boys: Trial, Case, Harper Lee & Names,” History.com, February 27, 2025 https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/scottsboro-boys
Ferguson & Michael Brown
“Why was Michael Brown’s body left there for hours?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 7, 2023 https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-courts/why-was-michael-browns-body-left-there-for-hours/article_0b73ec58-c6a1-516e-882f-74d18a4246e0.html
“Killing of Michael Brown,” Wikipedia, October 18, 2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Michael_Brown
“A decade after Mike Brown’s death, his family’s calls for justice continue,” CNN, August 9, 2024 https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/us/michael-brown-ferguson-10-years/index.html
Trump & DeSantis “Anti-Woke” Policy
Trump “Everything woke turns to shit” quote:
“Trump: ‘Everything Woke Turns To Shit,’” RealClearPolitics, August 21, 2021 https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/08/21/trump_everything_woke_turns_to_shit.html
DeSantis “where woke goes to die”:
“’Florida is where woke goes to die,’ Gov. Ron DeSantis says after reelection victory,” CBS News, November 9, 2022 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ron-desantis-florida-where-woke-goes-to-die-midterm-election-win/
“Governor DeSantis Delivers Inaugural Address,” Florida Governor’s Office, January 3, 2023 https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-desantis-delivers-inaugural-address-sets-priorities-second-term
Stop WOKE Act and federal judges calling it “positively dystopian”:
“’Positively Dystopian’: Federal Judge Blocks Florida Stop WOKE Act,” Miami New Times, November 17, 2022 https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/positively-dystopian-federal-judge-blasts-floridas-stop-woke-act-15724123/
“With a nod to ‘1984,’ a federal judge blocks Florida’s anti-’woke’ law in colleges,” NPR, November 18, 2022 https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137836712/college-university-florida-woke-desantis-1984
“Federal Judge Blocks DeSantis ‘Dystopian’ ‘Stop WOKE’ Act,” Law & Crime, November 17, 2022 https://lawandcrime.com/first-amendment/this-is-positively-dystopian-judge-skewers-desantis-stop-w-o-k-e-act-blocks-law-turning-higher-ed-workers-into-states-mouthpieces/
Trump 2025 AI and DEI executive orders:
“Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Prevents Woke AI in the Federal Government,” White House, July 23, 2025 https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-prevents-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/
“Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government,” White House, July 23, 2025 https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the-federal-government/
Trump Truth Social post about states and DEI in AI:
“Trump backs ban on state AI laws,” Axios, November 18, 2025 https://www.axios.com/2025/11/18/state-ai-laws-trump-ban
“Trump calls for federal AI standards, end to state ‘patchwork’ regulations ‘threatening’ economic growth,” Fox News, November 18, 2025 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-calls-federal-ai-standards-end-state-patchwork-regulations-threatening-economic-growth
CDFIs & Kristen Gardner Beal
CDFI funding withheld, Beal story, website scrubbing:
“Trump’s war on ‘woke’ forces community lenders to cut services or close,” Reuters/Yahoo Finance, October 31, 2025 https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-war-woke-forces-community-101824456.html
Alternative source: “Trump’s ‘Woke’ Crackdown Threatens Community Lenders,” GV Wire, November 1, 2025 https://gvwire.com/2025/11/01/trumps-war-on-woke-forces-community-lenders-to-cut-services-or-close/
I so appreciate this insight and so well written and unpacked. Embarassingly, I've been confounded by where the term "woke" came from and felt the twisted knife of it but couldn't make sense of that. I'm going to really soak in the sorrow of what you've shared.
"Whatever befalls you is the reaping of what your own hands have sown." (Quran 4:79) If you sow WHATEVER you will reap it. If you have reaped WHATEVER it is because you had sowed the seed of that fruit. So really there is no injustice and never was and never will be. But your ego gets in the way of accepting this Truth that is in The Quran - which "...is for all humankind." (Quran 14:52) You like the positive but you don't like the negative which is the strength of the positive. "The strength of the law is sin and sin the law." (Jesus in First Corinthians 15:56) You like to win but you don't like to lose. You like to gain but you don't like loss. But Jesus said "Those who lose their life for my sake will get a better life even Eternal Life." (Matthew 16:25) But Satan was REPRIEVED by Allah to tell you how to "get away with" doing to others what you don't want others to do to you. Accept Islam now and Stay Truly Woke. Amen?