Be the Change you Seek

I’ve written before about living in the south(Mississippi to be exact), but that growing up on military bases all around the world afforded me a greater view of humanity.  I have been reading commentary in the morning paper by various leaders, preachers.  Tomorrow is the 3rd Monday in January, so it is a national holiday celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, renowned civil rights leader.  While on a national front, his accomplishments are well documented, it is his personal life that resonates with those who knew him best…his family.  Dr. King was a preacher, becoming co-pastor with his father over a small Baptist church in Atlanta that his grandfather had been pastor of, then moving on to his own church.  Quite a feat actually in a time where smart black men where looked at as suspect, and often harmed by those using hate and ignorance.  Was he perfect?  NO.  There were documents by FBI as well as biographers who suggest he had extramarital affairs.  Something he did not deny, but did admit to it being a hurtful situation.  His family however, loved him and overlook that fallibility in the interest to push his legacy of being outspoken and correct in his push for equality for all races.  I like to think that even in his office as minister, that he would also agree that civil rights applies to ALL humans.  Not just on race issues, but for faiths, sexuality and gender.   It was his outspokenness that helped shape our country into forming a basis for civil right laws that has continued to develop.  He even spoke on what he would really like to be remembered for:

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter

Now what I get from that?  He TRIED to do the right thing.  Was he successful?  Somewhat, although a great many strides of what he tried to accomplish was done after his untimely death.  The fact is, he could have gone on and become one of these major players from elaborate churches and ministries that one sees today, and filled his pockets, but he saw injustices, not just for his family based upon color, but for others as well.

A Russian proverb says, “Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are”.  That says a lot.  When Dr. King was working to motivate people to see past color, there was a wall of segregation built by people who used ignorance, and hate to spew their vile version of truth.  It was a rarity to see a mixture of people getting along.  I can remember things from those turbulent days that scared the hell out of me as a child. Who, after living on secluded, isolated bases where everyone was  treated the same no matter what because it was all affiliated with the military, had no idea of the hate in the “real world”.  My dad would be off to foreign places that we could not accompany him to, so we came back to Mississippi with its history of bad behavior well documented,  I saw first hand the ignorance of adults when the schools were forcibly segregated. Nobody taking into account that children could be harmed when buses were overturned, Molotov cocktails thrown , people beaten, angry, vile hate speech  tossed carelessly.  All those things left me with an impression.  It also left me with nightmares, as I’m sure it did others who had to experience it.  It also left me with a LOT of questions for my mother. “Momma, how come those people were angry that I was sitting with Patrice on the bus?” “Momma, why did they call her that word”(I am sure ya’ll know the one, but I will NOT allow it to appear in my personal space).”Momma, you said that we are all the same. Why do these people here think we aren’t?” “I play with others from all over the world, black, brown, yellow, white…is that wrong”? Yeah, my mother had a LOT of work to do in trying to explain the ignorance of others.  She had a lot of work to do trying to protect us counting the days until my dad returned and we could go back to that insulated world of the military.  Only it wasn’t ever quite that way after that year.   In truth, the school I attended in Ashland was desegregated because its located in a mostly rural county with lot of farming, but with forced busing, the kids from that school were going to be bused to predominately black school that was about 45 minutes away.  Make sense?  Not to anyone else either.  Parents(predominately white) decided they would NOT be forced to send their child that far from home from a school that they had grown up in as well as several generations of family.  Sometimes government in the guise of “vested interest” does some stupid things.  National guardsmen were sent into the fray.  What to do?  Close the school.  Teachers stopped showing up for work, parents didn’t send their children.  A forced vacation.  I was out of school for over 6 weeks. I was one of the fortunate ones, I loved to read, so kept up with things that way. Soon,  my dad was sent home from Korea and we moved to Oklahoma.  I could hear my parents sometimes speaking softly about the tensions still back “home” ,as it was always called.  It wasn’t until the next school term that things quieted down and the state upon looking at the dynamics of students, opened back up the doors of the school.  So what was learned from this?  That one does not truly know how deep feelings run about other’s rights until drama is brought to the forefront.  I was not allowed to go down the road to my friend Patrice’s house even though previously I had walked it often after we got off the bus.  Not because my mother would not allow it, but because her father would not.  My grandfather told me it was no longer “safe” for girls to be out alone.  I was a confused 8 year old, believe me. Now my grandfather and my friend’s father had sharecropped many years in that cotton field down below their homes.  Times were tense.  Grownups speaking in hushed, angry, tense voices.  I have no recollection of how that was solved.  I lost track of my friend.  I have no idea how her life turned out.  I hope that she is happy in hers.  That she too has family, is loved by her friends, maybe even her own little people to drive her to distraction as mine do at times.  What I wish most of all is that she too, having seen the horror of other people’s version of “truth” set out to be the change she wished to see in our world.  I try to set the tone in my home of respect for all(I try and save the judgments for those who refuse to educate themselves).  I also pass that on to the little ones.  I want their world to be mush as Dr. King envisioned it.  A world of equality for all, based upon love, compassion and respect for ALL people.  We are ONE race…HUMAN.

DEUCES