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The Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:
Personal Reflections.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has had a profound influence on my life in many ways. This piece is a sort of confession, a remembrance, as well as a tribute to the civil rights movement and to this great human being.
I was born and raised in North Georgia, an hour or so north of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr. King's Atlanta congregation.
Despite living so close to what might be considered the hub of the civil rights movement, our town and area could hardly have been further away! We still lived in the South that had been, while Dr. King was bringing us, kicking and screaming, into the world that now is. These were very different places!
Like most White Southerners of the day, despite the whitewashing attempted by most of my generation and the ones proceeding mine, we were, in a word racists, and proud of it!
Without going too deeply into the depths of my families racism (and it goes deep indeed), many of my earliest memories are of hearing my dad and others disparaging the works of the civil rights movement and, especially, the man they called the Nigger King (henceforth referred to as the N King).
Now, here I am in 2008, a preacher of love and a respecter of diversity, and I would use that offensive word in a public blog! Why on earth would someone who believes as I do ever use such a word? Good question, and there IS what I believe is a good reason (chances are you will never hear me use this word again!). But here it is intentional and relevant to what I wish to share, so please be forgiving.
Even as a growing minority of people are beginning to question the reality of the Holocaust, so too if you hear Southern Whites of my generation talk, you would think we were all open minded, socially conscious people in those days! It isn't so friends! Most of us were hateful and we used racial and other epithets without even thinking twice about what we were saying! May I repeat my conviction that the majority, I'd even say the vast majority, of Southern Whites of my generation and those proceeding it used these sorts of words, and for the most part we didn't even think about it (and we were far from alone in this!)! BUT lots of us are getting better...
To the majority of people I grew up with, the idea of equal rights for anyone other than Whites was revolutionary... and wrong! The Bible even condemned it! Or so our ministers claimed. Dr. King was routinely referred to as a Communist and a rabble-rouser! When one grows up hearing such things, one naturally comes to accept them as facts, unless they are challenged. If everyone agrees, then it must be true! Right?
Of course not! But we today can see the exact same mentality at work! We still have groups of people that society tells us it is good to hate! Much of our Western controlled media, society and religions tell us it is "American" to hate Muslims, it is "Christian" to hate homosexuals, it is "patriotic" to hate Socialists... and prejudice against people of color is still with us as well of course. Millions of people accept these divisive notions with little or no question! Just as I did growing up! When I was a boy, we were supposed to hate Communists, Jews, Catholics, hippies, people of color (any color besides our own!), and all non-conformists. Bigotry was virtually written into our DNA, even though many won't admit it today!
But on April 4, 1968, my father killed Dr. King!
... Allow me to explain...
During the months leading up to this fateful event, the anti-civil rights movement rhetoric in our neighborhood had become deafening. Most everyone we knew felt positive that a long overdue race war would begin any day. Indeed, my parents, like so many others, had fled Atlanta for the White outlying towns out of fear, ignorance and prejudice. Most of our homes contained stockpiles of weapons, our Southern ministers urged all God fearing White folks (the only sorts allowed in our churches) to be ever vigilant against the Communist and Black menace, and the civil rights movement that was doubtless among its vanguard. I well remember being afraid much of the time lest the Blacks of Atlanta invade our Caucasian refuge!
And yet as I was being trained in firearms there was a sense of excitement as well! The South would soon rise again! We all knew it! Save all your Confederate money!
This same year, Helter Skelter was released by the Beatles and Charles Manson proclaimed its hidden meaning: the anticipated race war was coming soon! My parents didn't like the Beatles (I loved them, especially John and George!) and they certainly were no fans of the Manson Family (I was fascinated by them), however our lives were charged with race war fever and we were ready to fight! Well... that was the general sense at any rate! But those Southern boys, back then, could have raised Hell!
As for me, I was an unpopular lanky eleven-year-old introvert without a clue! A year away from the vision that forever changed my life.
The guns were cool, the energy was electrifying and betwen dodging bullies, I bought the "the South's Gonna Rise Again" hype without question! Although, what a Restored Confederate States of America might look like was frankly a bit intimidating!
But... this particular day, Thursday, April 4, 1968 I had things to do! I probably suffered through another day at grammar school, but thankfully have no memory of it, but how well I remember what happened after school!
I raced into the yard on my bike, quickly changed out of my school cloths and into a pair of cutoffs (my mom demanded I at least wear that much), that's all I ever wore when I had the option, cutoffs, no shirt, no shoes, no fuss. Dressed in my preferred attire, I hurried off into the back yard where I had been building a very cool fort! It wasn't large as I recall, but it was two floors and it was one of my favorite private places to escape the world. In those days, I often sat hidden behind the branches, pine needles, and plywood walls of the top floor doing something I had been firmly ordered never to do! Twas a most heinous sin, one that I will now reveal to you, my hopefully tolerant reader! Confession, they say, is good for the soul. Hopefully you will feel none the worse towards me after hearing of it!
From whatever sources I could manage, from school and sometimes from the meager school supplies my mother provided, I would take perfectly good sheets of paper and draw on them! I even invented a game where I would draw maps on the paper and then, with pencil lead missiles the nations would fight their wars. The "Kar Nation" was evil and unstoppable (it's just a coincidence that my dad worked for GM right?)! These activities were harshly condemned as a terrible waste of paper, but ofttimes I hid in my fort and indulged in such misbegotten fantasies for hours!
So, there I was sitting on the second floor of my recently completed backyard fort, my Stars and Bars (the Confederate flag) flying from a makeshift pole just outside (I still have that flag!), when from the direction of the house I heard the screen door bang open and my sister rushed out. She would have been around 13 or 14 at the time.
Under the plywood of the second floor, I had prepared a hiding place to stash my cigarettes and desecrations (my abuses of paper). As I heard her walking towards me, calling not my insulting nickname but my real name, I quickly stashed the papers and hopped to the bottom floor and into the early evening air. It was around 6 PM.
"We got to go, pack a bag and hurry!" my sister urged.
"Go where?" I asked.
"We got to go stay with the Mrs. Barnett [I believe it was]."
"How come? You go ahead and I'll stay in my fort."
"No you can't, momma and daddy won't be coming home tonight."
"How come?"
"'Cause daddy and Mr. D. done killed the N King! Now hurry up!"
I was incredulous! Sure, I had heard Daddy say hundreds of times that someone should kill Dr. King and I had been told often enough that our family friend, Mr. JD Stoner, had burned down some churches in Alabama... but actually to do it? We had had all heard rumors of course, but...
"How do you know that?" I asked her pointedly.
Just then, my brother, who would have been around 15 I suppose, came in and asked if we'd "heard the good news."
We looked at him blankly.
"They killed the N King!" He was overjoyed! We all were, although my sister and I were also worried about what this good deed might mean for us. Our dad made the money. If he was in jail...
"I know!" my sister replied, "Mrs. B. called and said we should stay with her till momma gets home. She figures daddy might have to stay in jail for a week or two, just for show. But maybe longer if the N's make too much noise about it."
The assumption was that everyone would be thrilled by the courageous act and that he and Mr. D. would certainly never be charged with anything! Why, they would be heros!
Just then, my brother turned the TV on to one of the three chanels we got and sure enough, it was on there.
"They killed him in Memphis and momma and daddy and the D.'s were going to see Mr. Stoner in Chattanooga, I bet they all went together and did it." My brother sugested.
"I don't think Momma would have killed him!" I objected.
"Of course not [my insulting nickname]," my brother said thumping me on the head. "She and Mrs. D. probably had dinner with the ladies while the men did God's work."
That made sense to us, so my sister scribbled a note saying where we were and we all hiked over to Mrs. B.'s house. We were all so proud, something we rarely felt!
But our joy was short lived. When we arrived Mrs. B had the TV news on and the talking heads were droning on about a man we hadn't heard of before. Soon my mother and father showed up at the door, a quizical look on their faces. They'd been with the D's, but they had had nothing to do with the murder. Today I thank God for it, but back then...
I still recall our absolute certainty that he had done it. Still, I recall how gloriously happy everyone was that someone had. I seldom remember my dad seeming any happier than he was that night!
Of course I don't remember the exact words we spoke, but the above would have been quite close I'm sure.
Over the next few days it was the talk of the area. Everyone was celebrating, thrilled, there was even a street party of sorts, but people were also anxious that the assacination might bring on the war and that would be a mixed blessing. City after city erupted in riots in the aftermath of the murder. Most everyone I knew stayed home from school, just in case. I think I was out for two weeks. Since I absolutely loathed school, the joy of not having to go to that forced hell contributed to the festive feel of the days. The men patrolled our neighborhood hoping "to get lucky" but as far I know, nothing racial happened, at this time. As time went by the riots ceased and life returned to normal.
As I said at the outset of this piece, if one is raised in the midst of racism, racism seems like a perfectly normal outlook. The same is true of antisemitism, homophobia, sexism and so on. I must confess that while I was at times bothered by some of the overt hatred and the thought of having to kill people in the coming race war, it really didn't strike me as something that was immoral. Racism (we thought of it as respecting the natural order God had instituted) is just the way the world works! Or so I then believed. I am of course leaving out a LOT of events for the sake of brevity!
If nothing ever happens to rattle our assumptions, one will probably never change them. Rattling assumptions and preconceptions is what Dr. King and the civil rights movement did however!
Due in large part to the rage brought on by the assassination of Dr. King, I became curious. Why were people so upset? Even some White people seemed to think the killing was wrong judging by the TV news! What was up with that? The TV news wouldn't lie to us! I asked my teachers at school about it; I don't recall any of them bringing it up in class, and for the most part, their response was, 'this is the sort of thing a boy should ask his parents about at home'. That told me nothing. I knew what they thought. So I just continued with my life with one ear open, but otherwise nothing much changed (except my body, it was changing a lot in those days).
But then about a year later everything changed!
In 1969, I had a vision. I won't go into it here (I recount much of it at MyStory), but in short, it convinced me that there was much more to life than I had ever dreamt possible! I began to listen with different ears, to see with different eyes... Still, when it came to racism ("white pride") I didn't rock the boat; it is just the way things had always been. I didn't know any black people, had never talked with any black people, had never met any black people, and didn't expect I ever would, other than in unavoidable social encounters like restaurants etc. (this still angered my dad, that they had been forcibly integrated) but even then the races stayed to themselves 'as God intended'. Still, the vision got me thinking...
Then came 1970 and the eighth grade.
I'm told that my recollection here isn't completely accurate and that may be, but its close. Apparently my high school (we had no middle schools) had already accepted a few black students (I had not thought so) but on my first day of high school a bus unloaded and what looked at the time like hundreds of black kids disembarked, it was probably more like 20 or so, and they were probably as worried as we were!
I had been in the presence of black people before by this point, and once a year we made our family pilgrimage into depths of Atlanta to watch the Sears Department Store light the "Great Tree" (now its done at Lenox Square) and there were many African Americans present there. But the sight of so many black kids at a school I'd be atending, and the thought that I might actually be in class with one or two of them was disconcerting to put it mildly!
AGAIN, please understand that this is how I was raised and that chronicling such events I think are important, lest we forget that segregation and overt racism have not been gone for that long.... not that they are now of course either!
Most of the White kids were carrying knives etc. including me. Most of us expected that the race war would begin at school because of the forced integration and we wanted to be ready to do our bit for the Race.
But something happened at that school for which I was not ready but will be forever thankful!
A lovely African American girl named Sicilia.
Sicilia decided, for reasons I still cannot fathom, that she loved me! Not just liked me, she loved me! She told me this repeatedly and at the most awkward times. I would be walking down the hall and she'd brush up to my side and take hand. Being a Southern gentleman as such things went, I didn't want to be rude, so I would snatch my hand back and dash for the nearest boy's bathroom or some other place she was unlikely to follow. This went on for probably two weeks, it seemed MUCH longer!
Then one day, I was sitting in the school cafeteria alone when in walked Sicilia! Some of her girl friends were on the other end of the room so I wasn't too concerned; I just made a point of looking away.
But then... down came her tray, out came the chair next to me and she was there, actually leaning on me and asking how I was doing! Being a boy of normal hormones, I would have been stoked had she been White, but.... I was terrifed!
I stood up and reached for my plate to leave. "Sit your White butt back down! You ain't through eating yet!" she demanded.
I obeyed and she kept talking to me, being friendly... I stared stoically at my food tray.
From a nearby table I could hear the other kids snickering. "Hey look [nickname I dislike] is a Backerds Oreo!" And it seemed the entire room was in hysterics, laughing at me, condemning me. For those who may be blessed enough not to know, a "Backwards Oreo" is a person who is 'White on the outside but Black on the inside,' in other words, a White person who associates intimately with Black people: An N lover in more common terms back then.
As ashamed as I am today to admit it, I stood up, took my lunch tray and shouted at Sicilia, "Listen here N! Leave me the F alone!" or hateful words to that effect and was about to storm out, to demonstrate my disgust with her kindnesses. I had enough problems already, I certainly didn't need that!
But to my absolute shock, Sicilia stood up and ran out of the room in tears.
I was floored! Everything I had been taught had just flown out that door with her! I put down my tray and chased after her (actually, I probably walked nonchalantly from the cafeteria, and then chased after). I saw her ducking into some nearby woods and hurried after her.
Now, this is going to sound VERY harsh, VERY ignorant and perhaps hard to believe... but it's the truth.
As I entered the woods Sicilia was seated on an exposed tree root and I sat down across from her and stared. For a few moments neither of us spoke. My gaze was transfixed on her beautiful ebony sweat gleaming face. In her face I beheld a loveliness I had not seen prior to that moment, but that was not what held my gaze. What left me speechless was the that from her eyes tears were streaming. I carefully, gently reached out with my index finger and wiped a tear. I looked at the wetness, rubbed it between my thumb and first finger, then back at Sicilia. I was dumbfounded!
"What?" she asked.
"You, you're crying!" I exclaimed.
Her look was one of utter dismay. She said nothing, but her look said, "Duh!"
I stammered for words, which I often did in those days, and finally managed, "But, you can't cry!"
"I can't?"
"No!" I insisted. It was not possible!
"How do you figure that? You really hurt my feelings!"
"I... wa... how...."
She was staring at me now, trying to understand my obvious perplexity.
"But... you're a N...."
"You noticed huh... and we prefer Afro American if you don't mind."
"Sorry, but... Nig, I mean, Afro Americans can't cry...."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Only humans can cry!"
You can doubtless guess the direction this heart to heart conversation developed. I had been taught growing up that God had created White people in His image and that Black people had somehow evolved from apes by a trick of Satan; that's what tripped Darwin up. He didn't recognize Satan's trickery because he was not "saved"! I had even seen books that purportedly proved it! I say, "seen," because I was still functionally illiterate at this time, but they had illustrations. My understanding was that Blacks were less than human and incapable of having true emotions. To see her tears and to hear her tell me that I had hurt her feelings, coupled with my vision the year before that had convinced me I needed to question everything I then believed, knocked the White pride racial prejudice right out of me! Well... began the process.
As you listen to the speeches etc. you will hear Black leaders speak with pride about a sign in Memphis that read, "I am a Man!" We had always rejected that notion as devil-wrought absurdity. The fact that they had to claimed it proved otherwise! It was a dfferent lifetime!
Sicilia explained that her father was a very successful Atlanta lawyer who worked with the civil rights movement and other "freedom fighters." She and her brother had grown up in a relatively privileged environment and had gone to private elementary schools. As they grew older however her parents had insisted that she and her brother attend a public high school in order to experience the real racist world more fully. The type of encounter we had had was exactly what her dad had been wanting! She knew it, but it didn't make it any esier for her. Overall however, our encounter was good for Sicilia and it changed my life for the better as well. When hardships come they seem overwhelming, but as the Scriptures assure us, "All things work together for the good for those who love the Lord."
Well, maybe this wasn't exactly what he wanted... because our relationship became physical, which he probably would not have liked at all. After a few Black kids were stabbed at my high school and the situation turned progressively more violent, Sicilia's parents removed she and her brother and I never saw either of them again. (Are you out there Sicilia? I'd love to hear from you!)
In the years that followed I read everything I could get my hands by or about Dr. King (with the help of a Jehovah Witness friend I taught myself to read in 1975). I became a frequent visitor to Ebenezer Baptist Church, I marched in rallies with people like Hosea Williams of Atlanta and Jesse Jackson in New Orleans; I was fascinated by the life and realizations of Malcolm X and so on. I eventually came to understand the ties, both literal and spiritual, between Dr, King and Gandhi and Desmond Tutu and other Black heros whose work freed not only their people but the world.
But the truth is, it takes more than intention to rid one's heart of racism, sexism, homophobia, religious bigotry, etc. It takes understanding, determination, introspection, and patience and it takes the patience of others when we slip up, when inbred ignorance rears its ugly head. Words and attitudes are deeply ingrained within us all from childhood and they are not so easily replaced. If we truly hope for social justice and harmony, we all must be on guard, with Love... and Love was Dr. King's power.
So, today we remember the life of one of the most important people to ever live, the Baptist Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is one of those blessed people who saw wrongs and successfully worked in love to right them. The roster of civil rights heroes is a long one. Countless people, like dear Sicilia, will remain forever un-praised for their contributions, other than by those whom they have touched. However as I consider the life of this incredible man, I think also of Sicilia and of all the others who have patiently reached out their hands in love to enlighten the world to the dream of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Who cares, I'm glad YOU'RE here!
