Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was nine years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was first arrested. It was 1956 and King was 27. He would continue to see the inside of a jail cell in solitary or with Coretta Scott King and his followers until that never forgotten April 1968 late afternoon. Before going to the ‘mountaintop’, our inspiring leader had been stabbed, his home bombed, his family constantly threatened, and his life in peril every day.
As a single mother teaching school during the day and bartending at night, my children and I faced a similar fate when Skinheads came into my oldest child’s predominantly white high school soliciting membership. Nine years later, my younger college bound scholar and aspiring filmmaker endured stalking and bodily harm at a prestigious California university.
I was 11 years old when I first heard Dr. King’s powerful message while sitting between my parents in a predominantly white audience at the Music Hall in downtown Kansas City. All that many years ago and I can still remember King’s laughter when he talked about loving soul food like greens and ham hocks, red beans and rice, and fried chicken. He loved to have a good time, the times when he didn’t have to think about humanity’s burden that had fallen on his shoulders and being concerned of what the next day would bring.
Ten years later, as if it were yesterday, I recall sitting in the back of a Greyhound bus riding down to 31st and Indiana minutes before the urban areas of cities across the country went up in flames.
I was looking forward to coming home for spring break, but any plans for good times faded with the excruciating pain that never left our hearts. A few of my childhood friends who had marched in Selma and had gone to the March on Washington were heading to Memphis that very day.
Within 14 hours, the world shook like it had never been shaken before when the bullet that zipped in the direction of a Lorraine Motel’s room balcony silenced the Dreamer. Daddy didn’t move for awhile from his badly worn recliner chair. He pulled his handkerchief from his sweater pocket to dry tears I had never seen before coming from his beautiful eyes. I watched the television screen as the news broadcasters choked up on nationwide television as they had five years prior when John Kennedy was assassinated.
Walking up to the upstairs front room of our two-story house, I watched as the fires four blocks away burst upwards into the night skies. I listened as the National Guard tanks rolled down the streets where my friends and I had played when we weren’t in school. They were heading to protect the rich white Plaza and Mission Hills areas.
Glass from store windows shattered and the cries of a people in disbelief and ripping pain would be etched in the souls of chocolate baby boomers and their families especially, until the very end. I recall being so afraid the fires would head in the direction of Santa Fe Place where we had embraced as or own community after white flight and the burning of the elementary school where the ‘new kids on the block’ were to attend.
King’s words rang clear that night in the Music Hall so very long ago, but they transformed my thinking about who I was inside my Black skin, this person my racist white neighbors used to call ‘nigger baby’.
My mother cried the first time I asked her what that was. My favorite uncle, Sheffield, used to always tell me as he pointed out successful people of color in an Ebony Magazine, “Your destiny must never be defined or determined by what white people think of you. It will be determined by how much you love and appreciate who you are and how quickly you discover God’s purpose for your life on this earth.”
It’s kind of sad that many children today have no clue about the temporary conversion of our world as a result of that April day and the profound significance of the presence on this earth for such a short time of such a man as Dr. King. Many parents and educators have failed to explain to this generation why there is a national holiday for this man, one who was far more than one speech, one march, or one movement.
Like Jesus, King was reviled, hunted down, and martyred for his message and his beliefs, and those of us who followed him felt the same hatred as we do in a divided world of Black and white in current times.
We were so proud of this warrior because he stood for something, and was willing to sacrifice even his life for a cause that had to be fulfilled somehow, that of liberation, opportunities, and equality. Every time I see a homeless child or a veteran who has served our country but on that day is hungry and jobless, and when my children or my students faced such malicious racism even the perpetrators themselves didn’t understand, I am disheartened because the Dreamer’s dream was allowed to be deferred, to dry up like a raisin in the sun.
As we celebrate this national holiday in memory of this great citizen of the world, I am reminded of his words, “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. I choose to live for those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them, I’m going that way because I heard a voice telling me, “Do something for others.”
Martin Luther King Jr. left books, sermons, and instructions for those of us dedicated to the betterment of our diverse communities, our country, and our world. We must celebrate and honor not the entombed Dreamer, but the living one through our service to the least of our brothers and sisters, especially our children and during these difficult and unprecedented times.
They need us today more than ever. We must work for voter registration, stand up against voter suppression, and remember those who died horrible deaths on lonely back roads so we could vote.
When we honor King’s courage, his strength to love, and his ability to act against the grain in the face of fear and hatred, we must reflect on what his courage cost him.
Let us make his holiday a day of service to others.
