Martin Luther King Jr was silenced 40 years ago today. I remember being a fourth grader, invovled with my daily after school TV dose of Huckleberry Hound, when ABC broke into regular programming. My mom said, "Oh Lord." My dad said, "I'll be damned."
Didn't all the way get it. I just know Huckleberry Hound wasn't on. I didn't get what this man tried to do for 'colored folks' like me. I lived in Iowa. I drank from the same fountain and there weren't any buses to ride in my hometown of 6000. I know some kids called me 'nigger'. Yet, it was never bad enough to be scared to go to school.
I felt sorry for Martin Luther King Jr's kids, because they wouldn't have a daddy anymore. Just the same way I felt when JFK was silenced and saw Caroline at his funeral. What would they do with out her daddy? Just the same way I felt when Robert Kennedy was silenced two months later.
I get it now. Martin Luther King Jr had a dream. Shivers still go up and down my spine when I hear now. Alot has changed in 40 years. Yet alot has stayed the same-Jena, Louisana, any one? I grew up watching our country's unrest on TV. It seemed so far away from my Iowa town. Today's kids just know what they learn in school. It's historical to them. Things aren't that way now, some may conclude-as they stick in their ear buds. .
In the 60's, I watched Martin Luther King Jr on TV walk through a crowd talking if he were president. I thought how strange it would be to have a colored man as president. For some reason, as a kid, I was scared of that thought. Could a colored man do as well?
It's 2008. I'm not so scared anymore. Honestly Black may be color of the next president.
I get that. .
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