Forgive me for the details on this one but I have repeatedly told this story to eighth graders over several years and the veracity of the parts of the story that get a laugh seem to have grown in stature, perhaps at the expense of the truth.
Anyway, when I was nine or ten about fifty years ago, my high school-age sister brought home a new boyfriend, Walter, whose afro forced him to stoop as he walked through the front door of our Dayton, Ohio, home. I didn’t sense it then, but my recollection now is that our decidedly white parents may have been a little more flummoxed than they let on.
For instance, our step-father from southern Kentucky—if we let geography be our guide—had been raised with some rather predictable views upon the social situation playing out at his dinner table. Our mother’s liberalism, I reflect now, seems to have arisen more from her nascent attitudes about the role of women in that era. I cannot say for sure, then, whether or not her political passions extended to the racial questions of the day. Putting a more discernible point to it, it seems to me that she was more into burning her bra than sympathizing with those who were burning down the ghetto, if this ridiculous comparison serves as any measure to assess her views about Walter. I was just a kid, after all.
To their benefit, I recall nothing being said about the fact that Walter was black, although as I remember, this is all I wanted to talk about. He was cool enough to talk about his hair, a difficult subject to avoid when it is prominent enough to require ducking through doorways. I do, however, recall a bit of tension that I have chosen to attribute more to “boyfriend meets girlfriend’s family” than “guess who’s coming to dinner.” It’s really too bad that so much crap got in the way of that one.
I think of this now because of the plethora of fiftieth anniversaries marching through the calendar. We are, of course, fifty years without Martin and this has produced a melancholy that I am having a hard time shaking. Had he lived, he would now be 89 years old, a chronological fact that defies the dust. Imagine the elder King consulting those who today struggle with all manner of human frailty as they stumble through their responsibilities.
The reality, though, is that the King I imagine advising world leaders in 2018 is the largely fictional King wrapped in the Teflon of his martyrdom. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the hard truth that much of what we think of Dr. King today has been built around the sad circumstances of his demise. It was Memphis, Tennessee, by the way, April 4, 1968, fifty years and change ago.
I recently visited the site of his assassination, the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; a rather morbidly inspired journey now that I think about it. The most striking part of my visit was meeting Jacqueline Smith. She began her protest thirty years ago, in 1988, by refusing to leave the Lorraine. She had lived and worked there for 11 years. It was almost two months after receiving eviction orders that she was eventually dragged out of the building by the Sheriff’s Department. With no place to go, she camped out on the sidewalk across the street; she is still there, the last resident of the most famous motel in America tenaciously exercising her First Amendment rights.
By establishing the National Civil Rights Museum on this site, Jacqueline believes that this materialistic attempt at tribute to King has actually offended the legacy and teachings of King. She claims that the site should more properly be named for King’s assassin; honoring his agenda more than King’s own. To make her point, she informed me that part of the admission fee to the museum included a visit to the room across the street from which James Earl Ray ended the Civil Rights Movement. And, of course, at the end of the tour, the gift shop offered all manner of Disneyesque trinkets; key chains, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and the like. “Dr. King would be ashamed of us,” she said.
As I nodded my head in sad agreement, a score of white people were being prepped for their upcoming walk through the hallway and into the room and out onto the balcony where a bullet ended King’s life; so many white people trying to come to terms with all of this. Visiting Memphis, however, did make me feel good, like I understood 1968 just a little better; that in our own pathetic way we seek out an understanding of the past which helps us make sense of the world, even if it means crying over the spots where noble blood has been spilled.
It was a bloody time, after all. Without even mentioning Vietnam, there is no getting around the harsh reality that it was during this single decade that the forces among us took out Jack and then his brother Bobby; and on the other side of the divide, Medgar, Malcolm, and finally, Martin.
It was a messy time fifty years ago. It is a messy time now. I wonder how Walter is doing.
