About a year ago, I was visiting family in Alabama and went to see the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham. I never published what I wrote about that day because at the time it didn't seem very relevant or important. That's foolish because of course it is important.
About three years ago now I visited the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. The motel now serves as a Civil Rights Museum just like the one in Birmingham. The museum in Memphis is phenomenal and I will never forget how I felt standing outside of that hotel as well as how I felt throughout the tour, but Birmingham was different.
It takes roughly eight hours to get to Memphis from my hometown, and the same eight hours to get to Birmingham, but, for whatever reason, Birmingham has always hit closer to home. I suppose because I have a gang of family I love to visit there so it can often feel like home.
Back on track...
When visiting said family last February, my cousins Larry and Carol were nice enough to drive me to, and accompany me through the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, about 40 miles or so from their home. Being February, it was Black History Month and the museum was packed with tours of school children, their parents and teachers.
Here was our initial reaction: "We are the only white people here."
But considering what we came to see, I think it was the most appropriate situation I'd ever encountered. It may sound ridiculous, but I honestly felt like a part of something beautiful that day. My flair for the dramatic imagination took me back to the '60s and I pretended to be a part of that small percentage of Americans who supported Civil Rights. That percentage of Americans who acknowledged African-Americans as human beings and not "coloreds."
The thought still disgusts me how one race could so cruelly treat another race, literally based on their skin color. I am beyond grateful to have grown up in the decade I did and lack the ignorance of many people from past decades. However, I always catch myself wondering if I'd be racist if I were raised 50 years ago. Times are changing, but racism and prejudices still exist and it's atrocious. It scares me to think I could have a different opinion on equality than the one I was blessed with in this life.
Before I go on with the most eye-opening and amazing part of this story I want to give a small background on what MLK Day meant to me growing up. Obviously, MLK Day was nothing more than a long-weekend to me as a kid growing up in school. And all Black History Month ever meant was re-learning about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad and Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. More in depth, they always showed old black and white movie clips of sit-ins, bus boycotts and cops beating and hosing innocent people. When you're eight, ten, and fifteen years old, the sights of all these photos and videos are disgusting, but also seem like they must be from the 1700's because human beings simply can't be this barbaric. And then you grow up.... You lose all since of innocence and naivety and you realize that that kind of cruelty still exists, and sometimes it was among children in your own classroom.
To this day, this is how I feel about racism and prejudices. I have family members who are growing older but left their mindset in the '70s. It's pathetic really. I often feel more sorry for them than the people they discriminate against because they will never know a world where it is okay to love a Black person or be friends with a homosexual. But that is for an entirely different blog.
Meanwhile back at the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, Alabama... I am in the zone to focus on the heartbreak and misery endured by my fellow Americans, not even 50 years ago. Discrimination is something that will never die, and as much as it breaks my heart, something I will have to teach my children is true, yet completely unacceptable when it should never even be an issue.
As a writer, I always have a notebook and a pen. At this point, I graduated college four months ago and I am walking through this museum taking notes like I have a term paper due the following Monday. The first thing that catches my eye is a quote:
"Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration." - Thomas Jefferson
Of course this quote is a load of crap from the slave-owning ex-president. And when the Constitution was written, African Americans were slaves and not even considered human beings. (I have that marked and highlighted in a law book if you want proof.) The quote is beautiful, and a nice gesture if it proved sincere at all.
As I walk through the museum, reading the plaques and acknowledging the exhibits I am blown away by something simple. Something that shouldn't impress me as much as it did. Nearly every child in the museum with us was accompanied by a parent. Some even two. This is fascinating to me for two reasons: The first is because I went to public school and I know how involved parents typically are when it comes to museum field trips. The second is the amount of ambition and knowledge exuded by said parents to these children because of how education and the black race is typically portrayed in the South. Believe me, I'm aware of how harsh that sounds, but I am just reiterating the stereotypes.
I watched a mother guide her son through the museum. She made him stop in front of every plaque and read it aloud. This specific mother and son caught my eye, but in my peripheral I could see others doing the same, and could hear the children asking their parents questions.
In this moment my heart broke and my brain raced with questions to these actions:
Here was our initial reaction: "We are the only white people here."
But considering what we came to see, I think it was the most appropriate situation I'd ever encountered. It may sound ridiculous, but I honestly felt like a part of something beautiful that day. My flair for the dramatic imagination took me back to the '60s and I pretended to be a part of that small percentage of Americans who supported Civil Rights. That percentage of Americans who acknowledged African-Americans as human beings and not "coloreds."
The thought still disgusts me how one race could so cruelly treat another race, literally based on their skin color. I am beyond grateful to have grown up in the decade I did and lack the ignorance of many people from past decades. However, I always catch myself wondering if I'd be racist if I were raised 50 years ago. Times are changing, but racism and prejudices still exist and it's atrocious. It scares me to think I could have a different opinion on equality than the one I was blessed with in this life.
Before I go on with the most eye-opening and amazing part of this story I want to give a small background on what MLK Day meant to me growing up. Obviously, MLK Day was nothing more than a long-weekend to me as a kid growing up in school. And all Black History Month ever meant was re-learning about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad and Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. More in depth, they always showed old black and white movie clips of sit-ins, bus boycotts and cops beating and hosing innocent people. When you're eight, ten, and fifteen years old, the sights of all these photos and videos are disgusting, but also seem like they must be from the 1700's because human beings simply can't be this barbaric. And then you grow up.... You lose all since of innocence and naivety and you realize that that kind of cruelty still exists, and sometimes it was among children in your own classroom.
To this day, this is how I feel about racism and prejudices. I have family members who are growing older but left their mindset in the '70s. It's pathetic really. I often feel more sorry for them than the people they discriminate against because they will never know a world where it is okay to love a Black person or be friends with a homosexual. But that is for an entirely different blog.
Meanwhile back at the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, Alabama... I am in the zone to focus on the heartbreak and misery endured by my fellow Americans, not even 50 years ago. Discrimination is something that will never die, and as much as it breaks my heart, something I will have to teach my children is true, yet completely unacceptable when it should never even be an issue.
As a writer, I always have a notebook and a pen. At this point, I graduated college four months ago and I am walking through this museum taking notes like I have a term paper due the following Monday. The first thing that catches my eye is a quote:
"Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration." - Thomas Jefferson
Of course this quote is a load of crap from the slave-owning ex-president. And when the Constitution was written, African Americans were slaves and not even considered human beings. (I have that marked and highlighted in a law book if you want proof.) The quote is beautiful, and a nice gesture if it proved sincere at all.
As I walk through the museum, reading the plaques and acknowledging the exhibits I am blown away by something simple. Something that shouldn't impress me as much as it did. Nearly every child in the museum with us was accompanied by a parent. Some even two. This is fascinating to me for two reasons: The first is because I went to public school and I know how involved parents typically are when it comes to museum field trips. The second is the amount of ambition and knowledge exuded by said parents to these children because of how education and the black race is typically portrayed in the South. Believe me, I'm aware of how harsh that sounds, but I am just reiterating the stereotypes.
I watched a mother guide her son through the museum. She made him stop in front of every plaque and read it aloud. This specific mother and son caught my eye, but in my peripheral I could see others doing the same, and could hear the children asking their parents questions.
In this moment my heart broke and my brain raced with questions to these actions:
- Was it pride in where their race had risen from?
- Was it pain from where they'd been?
- Was it joy to where they were headed?
- How do you explain this history to your children?
The last thing I have written in my journal for this day is a quote from Dr. King as follows:
“We are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are
wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the
Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God
Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a
utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice
is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery
to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness
like a mighty stream.”
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