Tressie Souders, with music by Florence Price

Have you ever wondered how it can feel like
To handle filmmaking through a non-white lens?
For women like myself there was no Klondike

I later achieved endurance through my friends
I was born in the South East, in Kentucky
Robert and Leuvenia were loving parents

When we moved to Kansas we all felt lucky
But rainbows were different for those like us
A darker shade of pale was seen as mucky

Black migrants as my kin were Exodusters
Quite soon though the two took their separate ways
I now stood on my own as Tressie Souders

African American life was a maze
Our aspirations could not be ambitious
After high school I started off my work phase

Being a maid turned out to be propitious
Mr. Nelson and his family were kind
I became an observer, never vicious

To the sharing of stories I was inclined
Since I performed in a morality play
Depicting lives on stage developed my mind

Film allowed me to advance in a new way
By shattering the stereotypes on Blacks
A Woman’s Error truly marked my heyday

Grand it could be in the era of Imax
I then chose to seek fortune in Hollywood
Yet domestic jobs remained my endorsed acts

I met Oscar and ended my maidenhood
My husband was in charge of a billiard hall
But my status as his Mrs. was no good

In San Francisco I no longer felt small
Madame C. J. Walker took me in her home
As a woman of colour she had it all

She was self-made thanks to hair products and foam
And proved that dreams can be a reality
No limitations should come from a genome.