A Day of Remberance

Today is a day of Remembrance.  It’s a day set aside to honor a man who gave  hope to those who were treated as second class citizens.  Today is Martin Luther King Day.

I don’t remember hearing the speech that still echoes throughout history.  I was just a little kid, only three on that day in August, 1963.  When  you’re that small  you aren't as affected by things that happen far from you, even if they are on television.

What I do remember is the way things were.  Not only that day in 1963, but days and years later.  I remember how, even in Ohio, if you were black you didn't quite measure up.  When I was a little older, before I even attended school, I can remember going to Kresge’s Department store on Main St. with my Grandma Freed and eating lunch.  It was something we did often and, for me, was a treat I looked forward to.  I asked my Grandma why the “colored” people couldn't set in the booths like we did.  I’ll never forget the look on her face as she explained that “They aren’t like us.”  She used words that were common for the day, ones that we don’t use now.

When I asked why the “coloreds” didn’t have plates and forks like ours, she just gave me a look and told me to eat my grilled cheese sandwich.  Although I was still curious, I did as I was told and was later rewarded with a toy.

But it stuck with me, those men and women being made to sit at the end of the counter and eat off of paper plates with plastic forks.  It hurt me to see the way the white waitresses ignored them when they wanted more coffee or soda.

The only thing I understood was that things were just that way and there was nothing to be done about it.  I was told that “they” should be glad they were allowed to eat inside with “decent” (meaning White) people.

When we were in Kentucky I never remarked on the fact that there were water fountains that said “WHITE ONLY” or that the bathrooms were MEN, WOMEN and COLORED.  I guess up until that day in the Department store with my Grandma Freed, I had never noticed that there were people who were treated like they were less than me.

When I started school the kids in my class looked like me, they were white.  When I was in first grade the school system started “bussing” kids into white schools, I just thought that meant that those kids lived far away from the school and had to ride the bus to get there.  It didn’t bother me that they were darker than I was, or that their hair was different than mine.  They were just new kids in school.

I remember the adults saying awful things about those kids, things I won’t repeat.  If I asked any questions about why they were mad that those little kids were coming to school with me, the adults would either tell me that I didn’t understand or else they would get angry and yell things that I didn’t understand. 

I made friends with this little girl that I’ll call “Jenny”.  She was so pretty with her caramel colored skin, green eyes and almost straight hair.  We enjoyed playing together, although my Momma wouldn’t let her come into the house and threw a fit when she found out I had gone into “Jenny”’s house to play.  Momma actually spanked me and told me to “never go into that ******* house again”.  I told Mamma she was a good girl and her Momma looked just like my Momma.  That’s when I found out that there were things worse than simply being “colored”.

“Jenny” told me about this man named Martin Luther King and how he was leading people to freedom.  We talked a great deal about that because I thought we were already free and I didn’t understand what she meant when she said this man was going to free her people. 

That young girl taught me  a lot about how life really was in the 1960’s.

She explained that her Momma and Daddy had to come to the North just to get married.  A black man would be killed for even attempting to marry a white woman.  She told me about her Daddy’s brother who was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi because he wanted colored people to be able to vote.  She told me of the men in sheets terrorizing her Granny and burning down her house.

She told me how she and I couldn’t go into Kresge’s together and have a root beer float.  She said that I couldn’t sit with her at the counter because if I did the waitresses would make me move and then wouldn’t serve her because I had sat with her.  She explained how she couldn’t go into the movies with me and sit in the same row, or why my Momma wouldn’t let her stay with me or me go to her house to play.  She told me how her Momma, who was white, was treated worse than any colored woman because she had “lowered” herself by marrying a colored man. 

I saw for myself how people, of both colors, treated “Jenny”.  She was considered the lowest of the low because she was not white OR colored.  The colored people hated her because she wasn’t black, the white people hated her because she wasn’t white.  She didn’t fit in anywhere, and it scared her for life.

On that warm April evening in 1968, a shot was fired from a 30 caliber weapon.  That shot changed the world.

A man of peace, a man who had nothing but hope for this country and the citizens in it, lay bleeding on a balcony in Memphis.  A short time later he lay dead in a hospital close by. 

Many thought the Dream was as dead as the man who had spoken of it.

Many more thought violence was the only response.

And my best friend “Jenny”?  She ran all the way to my house, tears streaming from her eyes, to share with me a pain I could never understand.  She found me playing under the streetlight in front of my house.  She simply looked at me with her big green eyes and, with a sob catching in her throat, told me that Dr. King was dead and that a white man had killed him.

The next few years were rift with protest, murders, and riots.   The National Guard used teargas and riot sticks on college students.  People were shot in their beds and horrible medical experimentations on black men were ended.

Slowly things changed.  People began to change their perception of each other.  Anyone could sit anywhere to eat their sandwiches and drink their sodas.  The balcony was for whomever wanted to sit there.

In the years that followed I found out a lot about my own family history.  I discovered that, although most of us look white, we aren’t.  Many of our ancestors “passed” as white, many didn’t care.  The mixture of Black, White and Native American had created a wide variety in my family’s skin tone, eye color and hair texture.  Many of the older ones wouldn’t admit to it, many of the young ones didn’t care.

My friend “Jenny” would have laughed.  But “Jenny” didn’t live to see the changes that have taken place.  The scars on her soul were too deep.  She was just seventeen years old when drugs and alcohol took her from us.

So, today, while so very many people remember a great man by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, I also remember a little light skinned, green eyed girl named “Jenny”.