MLK Day

Today is a glorious day off from the rigors of teacherly life to commemorate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. However, being located in the South as I am, the day used to be known as King/Lee Day. Lee, as in Robert E. Lee, the general of the Confederate army during the Civil War, or The War Between the States, as some still doggedly refer to it as. My darling place of employment, being a private school, has the liberty to refer to this day off as whatever they want to, so it remains King/Lee Day. I wonder what Dr. King would think about the commemoration of his birthday being shared with that of General Lee. Or, maybe worse, what would Lee think about sharing his birthday remembrance day with the likes of Dr. King! Just some musings, those crazy things that go on in my head.

Having time to think on this MLK Day, I’m reminded of one of my little kid beliefs—one of those things that you used to believe with a passion when you were a kid but finally came to the knowledge of the truth when you matured. Well, one of my little kid beliefs was that everyone was black. I know, it’s crazy, isn’t it? Let me explain:

One day, a long time ago . . . I must have been like 3 or 4, I had no concept of race. I was a military brat, I was surrounded by a cornucopia of different colors of people, my little playtime friends were of all different races; race was never anything that entered into my mind. Why should it have? I was a small child. But one day, my mom decided that I needed to know about my heritage, I guess, and started telling me about how there were black people that came from Africa to America. They were sold as slaves and treated very badly. Then the only other thing I remembered was that she told me about Martin Luther King and how black people had rights. Remember I was only 3 or 4. I didn’t really get it all, but she kept repeating stuff about “black people.” I remembered asking her, “Am I black? Are you black? Is Daddy black?” She answered “Yes” to all of those questions, so I made a very childishly egocentric assumption: If all of the people I cared about were black, then everybody was. Now, of course I knew that black was a color, but since Mommy said that we were black and none of us were the Crayola color black, then people being black must mean something else.

Soon afterward I went out to play with some white kids that lived next door, and I remember announcing to them, “Everybody is black. I’m black, you’re black, my mom is black, everybody is!” The kids looked at me quizzically and said (we were in Mississippi, and they had been there long enough to develop a Southern accent), “Nu-uh. We’re white.” And I just stared at them blankly. I thought, “They don’t know what they’re talking about. I guess their mommy hasn’t told them about black people yet.” lol. Little did I know.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.