Approaching Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year feels different to
me than in years' past. Most likely that is because I went on a weeklong Civil Rights Tour, mainly in Alabama in Mississippi, this past November. (See my blog posts for November 13, 15, 20, and 27, 2018) I know the day will feel more poignant now that I have visited not only the place where Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, but also Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery where he was pastor and the parsonage there where King and his family lived together for the last time.
Now that I have been to so many places where people risked their livelihood and their very lives in order to break the barriers of inequality and hatred, this upcoming holiday no longer feels like a commemoration of one man. He inspired many along the way. He made a major difference in the course of history in this country, but he wasn't alone.
On Martin Luther King, Jr, Day, January 21, 2019, I will think about the courage of others who dared to act and who continue to share their stories as inspiration and as a call to the rest of us to act.
Here are a few of the people, Civil Rights footsoldiers, who shared their stories with our group in November.
Jo Ann Bland. After a supper of spaghetti and peach cobbler in the Tabernacle Baptist Church basement, Jo Ann shared her story, beginning with "I am tired of white liberal women." That got our attention! She clarified, saying she is tired of people announcing what they are doing. "Just do it." As the youngest person at age 11 to be jailed in Selma, she has DONE IT, and continues to do it.
Jo Ann became a freedom fighter when she told her grandmother she wanted to sit at the drug store counter, and her grandmother told her she could do that when she got her freedom. Before that Jo Ann's mother died when she needed a transfusion after giving birth and had to wait for "black blood." She accompanied her grandmother many times to the courthouse in hopes of registering to vote, and she herself has been jailed 13 times. She marched on Bloody Sunday, TurnAround Tuesday and finally completed the Selma to Montgomery march to the Alabama Capitol in 1965. Jo Ann admitted how hard it was, how hard it is, to "meet hate with love."
Vera Harris and her daughter Dr. Valda Harris Montgomery. The Harris home is located only a few doors away from the parsonage where Dr. King lived with his family. Dr. Montgomery was good friends with the King children and called Dr. King, "Uncle Martin." The Harris home housed 17 freedom riders on the third floor during the bus boycott in Montgomery and along with being fed, they were given sanctuary there.
Dr. Montgomery shared how hate filled her after King's assassination. "I felt hate for the first time in my life," but she went on to transform that hate into a passion for education and for sharing the stories. How grateful I am she is doing that, for her mother, Mrs. Harris, who joined us on her front porch, saying with a big smile how happy she was we stopped by and wanted to know where we were from, is losing her memory and had no memories to share with us about Dr King or his family or the ways she and her husband had worked in the movement.
Jeanne Graetz. Sometimes the footsoldiers were white. Jeanne's husband Bob was the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, an all black congregation in Montgomery. Jeanne told us how Bob was asked to promise not to start trouble when he started his ministry in Montgomery. "He didn't. He joined." Her job, she modestly told us was to "keep children from being afraid," and that was no small task since they received many threats for their active involvement in the movement. She told a story about a group of white men who parked in front of their house in an attempt to intimidate her, and she stared right back at them until eventually they left. Their church and home were bombed many times and remembering one man who threw a bomb at the house, she said, "I forgave him many times and took it back. I finally got freed from him."
I could go on, remembering Beverly and Randy McClelland in Philadelphia, Mississippi who fed us lunch, including the best peach cobbler I have ever had, in their cafe and grocery store. They went to a white elementary school and were told they didn't have to work, but just don't cause trouble. Or Waltha Kennie in Marion, Alabama who told us most of the people from Marion who marched in Bloody Sunday have scar tissue from the tear gas. "It is too much to talk about," and yet, she pushed herself to share stories with us.
And I think about Nancy Lee in Gees Bend, Alabama, who is one of the women carrying on the quilting legacy of African American women in that part of the country, dating from the days of sharecropping. We hugged when I told her my name is Nancy Lee, too. To be sure, we have different stories, but that doesn't mean we don't share the same hopes for equality and freedom.
I hold all these foot soldiers, along with others, in my heart, and while I can never fully know what they have experienced in their lives, I can honor them and do what I can to achieve the goals of the civil rights movement.
An Invitation
What will you do to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the ongoing struggle for equality? I would love to know.
NOTE: Three of us from this civil rights tour will be presenting an adult forum at our church, Gloria Dei, on Sunday, January 20 at 9:30. All are welcome.
