When Dr. King was around, I was young, naïve, and not as knowledgeable as I should have been in matters of discrimination. I remember going to school and sitting with three other children on the side of the classroom on a church pew for nine months. This occurred while all the other children sat at tables. One time, we were directed to sit at the tables; everyone was one and the same. This was Parents’ Day. The next day, the three of us were all designated back to the back pew. However, the next year, we were all graduated up one grade. By this time, we sat in the back of the room on the back row, with our own desks and chairs.
I remember the family drives in my father’s beige Ford sedan and in later years, a turquoise Ford station wagon that we called the “Green Hornet.” We would ride up Mount Vernon, through Rock Creek Park and across two bodies of water; one at the National Zoo and the other a mile or two up the road. We also would drive out to Seneca, Maryland and Glen Echo, Maryland. From our car, my siblings would admire Glen Echo, Maryland and would beg to go there. My father would calmly state, “Not today as we did not have time. However, we will go one day.”
Later in life, a teacher told me “he had never had a Negro student in his class, never taught a Negro student, and he wasn’t going to start now.” Years later, a teacher would refer to all Negro students as Niggers or Niggresses. He also explained that his grandfather was a slave owner and the terminology was passed down from generation to generation, and he wasn’t going to change now.
When change came, I remember being struck with awe and shocked while traveling on a train trip. My sister and I went to the lady’s room and stood in line like nice young ladies. A mother and two little girls rushed in and jumped in front of my sister and me. We said nothing. However, the young lady’s mother stood over them and said, “Get in the back of the line, and let the little nigger girls go first because they were here first.” That was an eye-opening experience, which I never forgot.
I thank Rosa Parks, whom I once met while visiting Congressman John Lewis decades ago. I also thank Martin Luther King, Jr. and the brave known and unknown heroes of all races, colors, and creeds, not to mention past Presidents who led the way, or contributed to making a way, to oversee that “all people become free.”
