San Antonio's MLK Parade coming up: January 18, 2010
I don't know about you, but every time I hear Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, I get all choked up. It means a great deal to me as I believe we are all members of the same race--the human race--and should be treated accordingly. In my opinion, this speech is the pinnacle of the civil rights movement of the 1960's.
As a child, my family spent time in a small Texas town visiting grandparents and other relatives. One of my favorite persons was Rosalee, my grandparents' "colored maid." At the end of the day, I often rode along as my dad or granddad would drive Rosalee back to the "other side of town." I never understood or believed any of their--or anyone else's--explanations for segregation. In my early teens, we lived in Hawaii. There, I encountered Hawaii's melting pot of cultures and ethnicities. "This is what it is supposed to be like," I thought.
At college, a sociology major (what else?), I joined in civil rights marches, studies and programs which encouraged everyone to embrace integration and social justice. Rodney King, whose beating and related consequences are attributed to the 1992 Los Angeles race riots, stole my line, as I often said "I don't know why we all can't just get along?"
One of my professors at Southwest Texas State organized a controversial exchange program with Prairie View A&M, which in 1968 was still an all-black college, just west of Houston. Exchange students--just like we were from another country or another planet.
On the day King was assassinated, my group was visiting the Prairie View campus. Stunned and disheartened to the core, we were immediately sent home to "avoid any problems." So many years later, I still have the words, I wrote as a college student:
"When we drove in that night it was black, no light from the heavens sprinkled out. The heavy air laid on us like dark emotion, like the shutting of a coffin lid, a coffin for a black man. But, Martin Luther King Jr. was no plain man for he was dressed in the garbs of a prince of peace and justice; the robes of equality and love; the leader of a cause long fought. And, still, he must lay down his life for that cause. No one person can take his place. It must be all of us joining together to make his dream come true."
There is still much work to be done, here and around the world. When all of us learn to treat each of us as fellow human beings, then, and only then, can we find peace.
San Antonio boasts the largest MLK Day parade in the US. Click here for more information.
ML Carter is an independent blogger and active ACTimes Community Contributor. To read more of her stories visit: marylauracarter.wordpress.com/
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