Is there anything I can say about Martin Luther King, Jr. that has not already been said?
I have seen/listened to the “I Have A Dream” speech, and I encourage others to see/listen to all of it. Not just the repetition of “I have a dream”.
I know the line of judging people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have seen the line, “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is a burden too great to bear.”
I have also seen the line, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
I’ve been to the King Center, and I’d like to go again because I think when we went there, Matthew had not even been conceived yet. (He turns 24 next month.)
So today, I’m going to address the question: If I had been old enough to remember Martin Luther King’s assassination, or if I had been an adult at the time of his death, what would my reaction have been?
I was born in 1963. It was not until relatively recently that I realized that in my hometown of Harlan, Kentucky, it’s very likely that my mother pushed my baby carriage past “Whites Only” and “Coloreds Only” signs. The Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the 24th Amendment, outlawing poll taxes were passed in 1964 and 1965.
Today, most of us see these events as necessary, and some of us wonder, why did it take 100 years after the Civil War for Blacks to gain basic rights — the right to vote, the right to stay in any hotel they wanted, the right to not be discriminated against in job seeking and hiring, the right to live where they wanted . . .
And some, as Martin Luther King wrote about in Letter From Birmingham Jail, thought that Blacks were moving “too fast” and wanted them to slow down.
MLK died on April 4, 1968.
Not long after his death, according to a January 17, 2022 article on CNN.com, 31% of Americans polled believed he’d brought his assassination upon himself. 38% said they were sad. 5% said they were angry.
Where would I have fallen if I’d been old enough to understand who King was and what had happened to him, and why?
Given that I lived in a small town in southern Kentucky in 1968, with conservative parents in a conservative community, it’s very possible that I would have fallen into the majority that was neither sad nor angry that he had died. And perhaps I would have believed “he brought it on himself”.
I might not have cared. After all, I’m not Black. Why should I care about the Civil Rights Movement? It doesn’t affect me.
Sixty-four years later, I’m only beginning to realize the injustice perpetuated towards Blacks in the USA.
One of my FB friends posted, “My travel is different because of the work you did on the road! Thank you! #MLK”.
The friend who posted that status is Black and he is currently traveling.
Before the Civil Rights Act was passed, it was legal for hotels to refuse services to Blacks, and Blacks couldn’t do a thing about it. I didn’t know until the 2018 movie Green Book was released that there was a guide, called The Negro Motorist Green-Book, written by Victor Hugo Green, which listed places relatively friendly to Blacks, places they knew they could stay and places they could go without possibly being harassed. I hadn’t thought about it: if you can’t stay in a motel while you’re on the road, where do you sleep after a long trip? Where do you get a meal if you’re hungry and the local restaurants have signs announcing “Whites Only”?
I wouldn’t have thought about that in 1968, in Kentucky, if I were old enough to understand what happened to MLK.
What would you do if a White person thought a Black person had “disrespected” you by not saying “ma’am” or “sir”, or by not getting out of the way of a White person fast enough, or by not following a White person’s orders? Well, look at Emmett Till. Or the thousands of other murders/lynchings of Blacks who didn’t “know their place”?
Would I have become one of those White people, thinking that “these people don’t know their place”?
Would I have regularly incorporated a particular racial slur into my vocabulary?
Today, I live in a mixed neighborhood; in fact, at the moment, I think we are the only White, English-speaking family in our cul-de-sac. Most of my neighbors are Mexican and I have seen some Blacks and Asians, and some Whites. One year, my son was the only White child in his class.
I attend a mixed church, as opposed to the nearly all-White church I attended as a child. I don’t know the percentage of Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and others in my current church.
Would I be here, and even be willing to be here in this neighborhood, if I’d been one of those people in 1968 who wasn’t sad or angry that MLK had been killed?
Would I be a racist? Or at the very least, patronizing to Blacks?
I think about a scene from Driving Miss Daisy, where, on the way to a dinner where Martin Luther King is speaking. Miss Daisy talks about how wonderful it is that things were changing . . . and then her chauffeur, Hoke, points out that she hadn’t even thought to invite him to the dinner until they were on their way to it.
I worry that this is how I think: that I’m glad things are changing, that I’m glad things have changed . . . but that I metaphorically don’t invite Hoke to the dinner until he’s in the car driving me there.
I’m glad I can invite a Black couple to dinner without fear of retribution. I have heard a story about MLK and his wife being invited to a dinner party by a Jewish couple (I think it may have been the rabbi and his wife of The Temple in Atlanta.) They got lost and Martin sent Coretta to the door of a White household to ask for directions, saying, “It’s safer for you because they’ll think you’re the maid.”
But while I’d love to think that I’m not a racist, that I’m not patronizing to Black people, that I treat all people equally . . . do I? I can honestly say that I am not a blatant racist. I am not a member of the Klan, and I find Jim Crow abhorrent. I am still discovering ways that Blacks have been and are still being treated that make me angry and that make me ashamed to be White.
And yet, sometimes I have the “those people” mentality when it comes to Black people. There’s the temptation to look down at non-Whites and say, “I’m better than you.” Just like Scout Finch described Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird: “All he had that made him better than his nearest neighbors was that, if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.”
If my skin color is the only thing I have that makes me better than others, that’s pretty pathetic.
On this MLK Day, perhaps I have more to say than I think.
I struggle with prejudicial attitudes towards people who are not White. I grew up in an all-White neighborhood and only went to school with Blacks because of mandatory busing. I have had Black friends, Black roommates, go to church with Black people, live in the same neighborhood as Blacks and other non-Whites . . . and I struggle with prejudice. It is wrong. My prejudicial attitudes are wrong.
Like my preacher has said on one occasion, I want to see our society not as “color blind” but as “colorful”.
I need to hear the stories of those without my privilege.
I do not want to be the person I may have become in 1968, thinking that “MLK brought it on himself”.
I do not want to be a patronizing, holier-than-thou White person that either thinks she’s better than White people or that wants to just show off how “woke” she is.
So that leaves me with the challenge: Am I willing to put in the work involved in deconstructing my racist attitudes and at least attempting to see the world through eyes that are not mine?
On this MLK Day, I am willing to start.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
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