I remember being incensed, but I do not recall feeling empathy. They were, after all, only niggers. They had been born as niggers and they still were, only now they were different. I remember thinking, somewhere in the recesses of my mind that these people (?) could have feelings. For many, many years, I had been aware of their existence, but they were not a part of my life. I did not interact with them at all, because there were none in my small town. But now here they were, angry and wanting civil rights. What was civil rights? Hell, I had no idea, nor did I care. I just knew that black people were acting up and it was affecting the whole world. My world.
Then at some point in time I had a thought. What if that were me? What if I was black? Would my friends spit on me? Sure they would. Could I go to school? No I could not. I watched the kids going to Little Rock and wondered why they were doing that. I watched the white kids throwing rocks and bottles at them. I could not understand that either. I listened to Martin Luther King Jr. speeches and they made sense to me. I was not raised in a racist home. Mom and dad were more concerned with putting food on the table then who went to school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
I remember. I remember the White Only signs in restaurants and on bathroom doors. I remember Medgar Evers, the Black Panthers, Rosa Parks and I tremble with shame and rage at the whole thing. We, proud citizens of the United States of America, brought black people to the shores of this great country in chains and yokes and forced them to labor in the hot sun in fields and kitchens of the aristocrats. They were niggers. They were not allowed to marry, they were sold and families broken and shattered. What were we thinking? What justification did our forefathers offer as a reason for this? We killed a man who tried to set them free.
For years they suffered in silence and then came another saviour. John Kennedy strove for civil rights and we killed him. Martin Luther King Jr. He did it. He freed them. And again we killed him. Our answer to everything is to kill some body. We now have Civil Rights laws in place and the second class citizens that suffered so many years are treated as equal. Not separate but equal, as once was proposed. This is a lot like don't ask don't tell. Who will we kill when that one is repealed?
I am not a very smart woman, but I do know right from wrong. We have done lots of things in this country to make me scratch my head and wonder, but you know what? Back in that era there was a lot of hate. Two sides and both thinking that their side was right. Emotions ran high. But it all worked out. I am a quilt maker. Sometimes a piece does not want to go in where it is supposed to and I have found if I tug a little here and a little more there, pretty soon it is in there right where it goes and it looks very good. Same thing happened in the civil rights movement. I watch Oprah. I saw some of the white kids who were there in Little Rock and some of the black kids. It is many years later and they have come to terms and faced their demons.
That is what life is all about. Just like the first time they flipped the switch and a light came on. Bet that scared hell out of some one. I think humans by very nature of being human want to do what is right. We just have a hard time figuring out what right is, but when we get the big picture we are the best in the world at enforcing it. Lincoln did not die in vain. Nor did JFK, or Martin Luther King Jr. We have come full circle, but there are more circles ahead of us.
My favorite quote of Martin Luther King Jr. is not from the I Have a Dream Speech, but this one:
"In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther King Jr.
