MLK
Sleep,
Sleep tonight,
And may your dreams be realized.
And if a thunder cloud passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on me
So let it be
Sleep,
Sleep tonight
And may your dreams be realized
And if a thunder cloud passes rain
So let it rain
Let it rain down on me
So let it be
Oh, so let it be. (Hewson, Evans, Mullen, Clayton – sung by Joan Baez on “Recently”)
Memories about Martin Luther King, adapted from Chapter 3 in Confronting Our Discomfort. America, by Marquis Woolford is from Chapter Two.
Five years after I had arrived in America I attended a national conference in Atlanta. I went to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change Inc. Martin Luther King Jr. is buried at the Center. His tomb lies in a Reflection Pool with the words: “Free At Last, Free at Last, My God Almighty Free At Last,” inscribed on the side. Jackie and Annie, two teachers at our Child Care Center at the time, accompanied me on a field trip to the site of this great man’s final resting place. We were all deeply touched by the experience. On the way back to our hotel we walked through an area that we had been warned was unsafe. What we discovered, in fact, was in that area people were walking with strollers, going into grocery stores or standing on corners and chatting together.
Out of one of the small grocery stores, a young African American man with dread lock curls falling about his face approached us. He asked me where we were headed and who we were. He remarked on the fact that we were carrying bags from the King Center and asked what we had learned there. I enthused to him about the beauty of the place and how much we had learned from visiting the site of such an important person as Dr. King. Then the man smiled and said quietly, “Well if you learned so much, why are you clutching your purse so tightly?” I looked down at my hand and saw that I was holding onto my purse with my knuckles almost white from the strain! I felt so ashamed. I could not imagine why I was behaving in that manner. There was nothing about the young man’s actions that could have caused such a reaction. Personal life experiences had not caused me this kind of fear. After relaxing my grip on the purse, I apologized to the man and asked him his name. He replied, “My name is Umuali and, look, it doesn’t matter. It happens all the time.” Umuali walked off down one of the side streets. Jackie, Annie and I stood still, shocked, silently as we watched him disappear.
Our field trip to the King Center had taught us much more than we imagined. We continued to walk back to the hotel through the unsafe neighborhood, which nestled between luxurious conference hotels on one side, and the Martin Luther King Center on the other. I decided I had a lot of unlearning to do. Since my personal life experiences had not been the cause for such fear, I realized I must have learned about it from the media. After all, every night on the news we watch yet another story about yet another brown skinned man who has murdered, robbed or drug-busted. I am grateful to Umuali for helping me confront my discomfort and identify the source of my fear. As I had learned this bias for only a brief period, I have been able to shed it quickly, by letting down my guard. At the same time I understand that in our culture the fear of African American men runs deep. The earlier in our childhoods we learned this fear, the more difficult it becomes to let down our guard.
Michael Moore writes:
Black men alleged to be killing, raping, mugging, stabbing, gangbanging, looting, rioting, selling drugs, pimping, ho-ing, having too many babies, dropping babies from tenement windows, fatherless, motherless, Godless, penniless … No matter what city I’m in, the news is always the same, the suspect always the same unidentified black male … the suspect is described as a black male … I believe we’ve become so used to this image of the black man as predator that we are forever ruined by this brainwashing.
[Michael Moore (2001). Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., page 59].
America by Marquis Woolford
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to us all.
A land for the free?
Why no free for me?
Is my color a crime, what did it do?
Did my soul sin before I was born?
Why does democracy seem likes it's mocking me?
Is it just that "Every man created equally" includes everybody except those of us considered nobody?
Don't look away!
Don't put your head down!
Don't turn away from me!
Look me in the eye and tell me to my face:
Why am I brutalized and utilized?
Do you hold something to gain?
Is it because of the 3/5's of human in me, that I get a fraction of your
freedom?
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