MLK

A few years ago, my daughters and I went on a Civil Rights road trip over the Christmas break. I had been super busy at work and planning a vacation was not a priority. Their mother and I split the Christmas holiday, and as my precious time with my girls loomed closer, the realization of us spending a week and a half together in my comfortable, yet small, beach condo hit me in the stomach like that fourth helping of pie at Thanksgiving. I had to figure out something and fast. I jumped on the world wide web and quickly learned that there were no affordable flights or availability for accommodations in the usual suspects. Ok, we can drive somewhere and have an adventure. I love New Orleans and it was time that I introduced my girls to the bread pudding at Mother’s, a muffuletta at The Corner Grocery, the gumbo at Dougie Chase, the BBQ shrimp at Emeril's and pretty much anything at Galatoire’s and Commander’s Palace. So I say to myself, “Self, let’s drive across the south, we can stop along the way and visit some of the sights about The Civil Rights movement and create some memories.”

I was a little boy growing up in Louisville, Kentucky when the Civil Rights movement gained momentum, culminating in the historic but grossly timid Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act a year later and the War on Poverty. Every night Walter Cronkite would tell us about the day’s events amid a never ending series of “shh’s” from my dad. In those days VCR’s and DVRs we’re only available if your last name was Jetson. There were only three stations from which to use, CBS, NBC, and ABC and my dad had to hear every word of the broadcast. I fidgeted wanting to ask questions but remained silent fearing the wrath of the “shh”. I remember hearing words like “Vietnam” and “assassination” and “communist”; I remember thinking I was famous because for a mite there was all this chatter about Bobby...and then, there wasn’t. The word “cuba” sounded cool and there was something about red china that conjured images of bright red dinner dishes and I thought that would be cool too. When my dad wasn’t watching Mission Impossible, Man from U.N.C.L.E, or the Avengers and “shusshing” his butt off, sometimes “the kids” got to pick the show which basically meant my sister who was the oldest or my oldest brother. Depending on how many of my three older siblings were present, sometimes I could ask questions like “I know who Smith and Jones are but which one is Alias?” Talking during The Monkees, however, was forbidden-don’t even.

The one time I could ask questions was when I watched TV with Barbara. Barbara’s position was “maid” but she was much more. She took care of us. Her mom worked for us as did her dad, both of her daughters and her aunty. On most days, Francis, Barbara’s mom, worked at the Weber’s house. Shelly Weber was my dad’s law partner. But we got Francis, the matriarch of the Bishop family on Friday. A light skinned, serious, proud Black women who was strict and could cut you to threads with her steely stare and pursed lips. You best mind your p’s your q’s when Francis was in the house. She wouldn’t hesitate to tell me to fetch her a switch iffin I was misbehavin’. It was only a threat and only once did I have find a stick. When I returned I was sobbing and crying in anticipation of the flogging. It was one of the first times I saw Francis laugh; she broke character and her stern serious expression gave way to the cutest giggle that sort of came from the back of the throat. She scooped me up in her arms and said “gwon boy and git yeesef a cookie..you mine me cuz next time I aint gon be so forgivin”.. I never heard that threat again, unless she followed it with a wink and quick smile. The Bishop family cooked for us, mowed the lawn for us, cleaned for us, vacuumed for us, swept for us, raked for us and loved us. And we loved them.

Barbara came everyday and the whole crew came on Friday. I loved Fridays when I was a little boy. My mom would do her weekly grocery shopping and come home with the station wagon, filled to the brim with brown paper bags, including the wayback. George, Barbara’s father would bring in the groceries and he would let me carry the toilet paper, a box of cereal or a loaf of bread that extended the length of my 5 year old body. George was easily in his 60’s and his father was a slave.

Friday was also the day when the soda man and the Charlie Chips man would come; the milkman had a standing authorization to leave 4 half pints of chocolate milk for my siblings and me. There was a buzz in the air and everyone was busy doing something. The mood was light, we all worked together and completed our chores. Afterwards we sat on our patio, surrounded by so much Red Maple, Oak, Sumac and Yellowwood that the Kentucky summer sun struggled to kiss my already freckled face. My brothers and I sat out on the deck enjoying a frosty Orange Crush and potato chips that were potatoes just the day before. Some chips were just the tiniest smidgen undercooked, and there was a little green ring around the edge. I loved those because they tasted more potato-y.

Barbara’s youngest son, Jay who was one week my junior, was my best friend. Jay would come over in the summertime and sometimes he would be allowed to spend the night, sometime the whole week. Barbara would bathe us at the same time. There was this soap-stained yellow plastic cup we’d use to douse each other with the sudsy water. It was hysterical because Jay’s hair never looked wet and mine always looked wet. The highlight of the summer was when I got to spend the night at Jay’s house though. It was an adventure and the coolest thing; it was way over on the other side of town, a Hajj of epic proportions; it felt as if I was goring into another world. And I was.

After leaving the oak canopied lane on which I grew up, we would travel for what seemed like an eternity. We would turn off a busy divided highway onto a road that was only paved about 10 feet in. It was dirt the rest of the way until the end. There were shanties, little better than shacks, crudely built, held together with chicken wire, duct-tape, hope, and love. Everyone was nice and friendly. Jus‘ folks sittin’ on the front porch, offering a smile and a wave to anyone who looked their way. We drove to the very end where the entire Bishop clan resided; all three generations. My innocently naïve brain told me that Jay’s house was WAY, like way, way, way cooler than my house.

My family had recently moved into a 5000 square foot one of a kind contemporary home on a multi acre wooded lot designed by my Dad’s somewhat hippish architect cousin, Gerald Barron. I mean my house was OK. It had rooms and everything, and we had a real grill on the inside with a hood and a drinking fountain that I couldn’t reach.

"You have a drinking fountain in your house?!?!?!?", my friends would ask. “Yeah but I really can’t reach it so it’s not that big of a deal to me.“.

Not surprisingly, Jay’s house didn’t have a drinking fountain. As a matter of fact, they didn’t have any running water of any kind. There was a privy and a well out back. When you wanted water, you would have to move this big metal thing up and down and the coldest freshest water you’d ever have would some flowing out of the spigot. I was so little that George would straddle me across the well handle, and I would hold the handle tightly when he pumped it up and down and we played Kentucky Derby. The piece de resistance of the Bishop Estate however was something that was alltogether the coolest, neatest, grooviest, thing ever. Right behind their house, like 5 yards away from their backyard, there was a train track!!! We would wait with giddy anticipation for the train to come barreling down the tracks. The L&N Railroad ran about as close to Jay’s house as was possible without running right through their living room. Yeah, super cool.

So one day, Barbara and I are watching TV while she is ironing my father’s handkerchiefs. I can’t remember what it was we were watching but I loved to watch I Love Lucy and Honeymooner reruns and Let’s Make A Deal. Barbara loved watching her stories, the Secret Storm, Days of our Lives and As the World Turns. When she would take a break and “sitfoaspell” have a “cow-fee” and a Salem, I would hop up and sit on her lap. She was as plump and cuddly as I was little. And she smelled like Jergens lotion, starch, and cigarette smoke. And I felt loved and protected.

On this day in particular, I was sitting on Barbara’s lap and we were watching something on TV. It was the summer of 1967, I was not yet five and we had been living in our new house a little less than a year. Without warning, and in an instant, the screen shifted on the small black and white TV, and there was Walter Cronkite….but it was daytime!!! How was this even possible??? As I was trying to wrap my brain around this conundrum , kinda like when you see your teacher at the grocery store, the screen again shifted. I thought it was a war movie or something because all these army men were running around some city with their guns out. I was starting to read a little at this point and remember seeing the word Detroit…for the longest time I thought there was a town called Det-royte and it had nothing to do with Dee-troit. There was a lot fighting going on, the city was in flames and some of the people seemed really cranky. The army men were pointing their guns at the other people and I looked up to Barbara and I said “Why are they army men so mad?” I remember thinking that someone must have cut their sandwich the straight up and down way like my dad did instead of the exponentially more elegant diagonal cut like Barbara. Barbara, looked down at me, her eyes welling with tears, and she softly said, “because they are colored.” I had no idea what she was talking about and I asked her what that meant? She pointed to my hand, laying on top of her hand.

“See your hand?”

“Yessum”

“See my hand?” “Yessum

”My skin is black and your skin is white.”

I distinctly remember thinking “OK, first your skin isn’t black, it’s more of a dark brown and my skin isn’t white, it’s more of a tan or beige.” The expression on my face indicated that I had no clue what she was talking about, and I didn’t. She forced me to look at our hands again, my little, itty-bitty tan colored hand sitting atop her massive, mahogany, calloused hand. I will never forget that image and it is still as vivid as it was over 50 years ago. Barbara said, “We are different. She pointed to her hand and said “I am colored” and she pointed to my hand and said “you are white. Now git up boy, I got work to do. Mrs. Handmaker ‘spectin me to dump da dishwasher and carry out the garbage ‘fore I leave”. And that was that…innocence lost, the last week of July 1967 was when I became aware that black people and white people are different, if nothing else their skin definitely looks different.

I grew up in a racially liberal environment. I have never heard anyone in my family use the n-word and can’t remember anyone in my family of origin even saying the less popular but equally insulting Yiddish version of the word. These words did not exist in our home. My father was ahead of his time. His law firm was the first in Kentucky to hire an attorney of color, a young “very refined” Black attorney and one of the first to hire a woman attorney, who he referred to as “one sharp gal”. He said she reminded him of “gal” he knew in law school who was super smart, her name was Sandy Day. Because he was somewhat of a maverick, at least in the hiring space, he gained respect in some circles and lost clients in others. My father was the founder of a bank in the section of downtown Louisville, euphemistically referred to as the “inner-city” but it was what it was; namely low income housing in Louisville’s west end of town, where the Blacks lived. Ultimately the bank failed and because my dad was a director of the bank, he was personally liable for all of the outstanding loans. He was wiped out. Like overnight. The feds came in one day and swept his accounts. That was one of the only times I ever saw my father cry. The president of the bank tried to commit suicide because he could not handle the snickers and sideway glances of Louisville’s white banking community; the not so overt but hurtful messages of “I told you so” and “you’re just not ready yet” hang in the air. Those were some dark days for our family. I was a senior in high school, the year was 1981.

And yet, despite the house in which I grew up, there was racism all around me. When I was in 7th grade, the Louisville and surrounding county public systems adopted a forced busing program in order to segregate the woefully “separate but equal” de facto segregated school system. I was removed from my cushy brand-new school in Louisville’s East End to the inner city to attend Meyzeek Middle School. There was a system where the first letter of your last name determined in which grade you got bussed. Those who had last names beginning with G, H and L were chosen for 7th grade. So I went with some of my crew, Craig Goldberg, Scott Goldberg, Johnny Greenburg, and Harvey Lerner (of blessed memory). There was also Nancy Goldberg and the Gunter cousins, Lisa and Sherrie and it’s where I met Chip Hancock, my astrological twin and reconnected with my crush from nursery school, Gaines Grider. This was the first year of busing, it was 1975 and we were scared. In today’s world there would have been an orientation or parents would at least do a drive-by so the child was acquainted even a bit. That’s not how it was done back then though. One day we woke up at the butt crack of dawn, took a bus to our home school and then got on another bus to head to the inner city. We went over the unkept streets and bounced along toward our new school. As we crossed Broadway and headed south there was a change to the neighborhood. A big change. There was a smell and it wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was pungent, whatever it was, like smell deafening if that’s a thing, like you couldn’t smell anything else because this smell got all Al Haig at your olfactory glands, announcing “I’m in charge here!” It was sort of disgusting but appetizing at the same time. It smelled like someone was maybe cooking meat or breakfast sausage but it was not something that made you hungry. I later came to find out that smell was the Bourbon Stock Yards a few blocks away. I remember thinking man that would suck to live there and have to smell that all the time (“24/7” was not a phrase yet). As if the residents in the low-income subsidized housing had a choice in the matter.

So on December something-ith, we left Jacksonville and drove to Atlanta. We got in around supper time, or suppa-taaahmm as they say in Atlanta, and made a beeline to Mary Macs’s Tea Room. Mary Mac’s in one of the classics in Atlanta and we had breakfast the next day at The Silver Skillet (duh!). After we had eaten, we headed out to see where Dr. Martin Luther King was born and then where he worked, The Ebenezer Baptist Church. Though both were cool and I’m glad we went, it wasn’t very inspiring. I was disappointed that I wasn’t “moved” more by the bookends of Dr. King’s brief life. Don’t get me wrong, the church was a fine church and all and the house looked like a great place to be borne I reckon, but there just wasn’t a lot of oomph. I was beginning to think that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. As we took the brief drive to Montgomery the thought of rolling eyes, audible sighs and bored teenagers, was tempered by the solace of my inner-speak reminding me “hey, at least they got their iPads”. “Wrong answer” I uttered to myself under my breath. As we rolled into Montgomery, I saw Dreamland BBQ up ahead and in a few minutes any thought of boredom became a casualty of those ribs. All was good.

The next day, we started at the Rosa Parks museum. Actually, we started at Davis Cafe. This little joint has been serving up great, authentic, “ho-made” no-frills diner food, since forever. We had to pay homage and fill ourselves with way too much food so that we could brave the bracing sub-50 temperatures. I was gonna teach my kids to sacrifice, even if we were on vacation.

Now the Rosa Parks museum was pretty cool. There were some pretend buses and as we got on, I saw my kids’ reaction to the physical evidence of the American caste system; the unimaginable oppression that hardworking Americans leveled at hardworking Americans. I was lucky to have caught the expression of their face because I hadn’t intended to, nor was it even likely. I have taught my girls that on stairs and escalators a gentlemen allows a lady to go first when ascending and in back when descending, thought being that the man will break her fall if she slips. And let’s be clear; this isn’t about a weaker sex, it’s not about women needing a big strong man (or even strong one) to save her and it’s not about objectifying women. It’s about being nice and civil and thoughtful and kind and considerate and mindful and respectful, something we sorely lack at the moment. So they are a few paces in front of me and they make it on to the bus right about the time I am approaching the bus door. As a result, in that split second, I could see my girls’ faces in the side view mirror of the bus, just as they saw the signs, “White Only” and “Colored Section”. I saw the reaction, surprise and shock cover their faces, they had a visible, physical reaction, like they sort of studder stepped. I knew exactly what had happened and I saw the moment of the “aha”; this was real life, it wasn’t a picture a GIF or a you tube video. …Maybe this wasn’t so dumb after all. We checked out the rest of the exhibits and stated to walk down the block to the Dexter Street Parsonage.

When Dr. Martin Luther King, was a mere 23 years old, and prior to graduating from divinity school, he was ordained Pastor of Dexter Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was a new father and had another on the way with his bride Coretta Scott. Dexter Street Baptist was a Black church (it was actually white, but the parishioners were Black) and like many Black churches in the south, and synagogues, churches, temples, mosques and more than likely every house of worship anywhere, became the center of daily life for its members. There were bible studies, potluck dinners, choir practice and of course a spirited Sunday service. This was a vibrant tight knit community who helped and supported each other as they navigated the mercurial road of Jim Crowe. This new guy came from black clergy royalty. His father, Martin Luther King, Sr. had been the reverend at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 1931, probably the most influential African-American church then or since. When King, Sr. assumed the helm of EBC, the United States of America was in the throes of the Great Depression. Because of King’s astute financial leadership and fundraising acumen the church survived when others failed, and King Sr. served for over 40 years. King Sr. was also heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement, serving as the first president of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP. Clearly, the expectations were high of the newest member of the budding clerical dynasty and the Dexter Street church was a perfect place for King, Jr. to cut his leadership teeth.

So it breaks down like this. At the age of 25, King, Jr moves down to lead a church in the deep south. He has been married for two years, has one daughter and the Kings are expecting their second child. The Jim Crow caste system is as strict and unforgiving as it was when the carpet baggers returned north after neither radicalizing nor reconstructing, leaving a vacuum of power and setting the stage for state ordained discrimination, suffering and degradation. Though the slaves had been emancipated about 100 years prior, they were hardly free. Sharecropping was nothing more than sanctioned slavery. The impoverished and uneducated Black man works on the same plantation as his family has for generations, but now things are different because he gets to share the profits of the enterprise. He can work hard picking the same crop, in the same manner, under the same conditions, wear the same clothes, live in the same hovel, eat the same food and sleep in the same bed. The good news is that they have the right to vote and the opportunity for education, both of which are deprived to them by the ethos of the southern economy and the southern power system. And wouldn’t you know it at the end of harvest and after market and after deducting rent and expenses, the enterprise broke even again, but at least you don’t owe massa, I mean the “planter” any money. It was slavery, plain and simple. The African-Americans had two choices, remain in the south and be subjugated to second class status or join the 6,000,000 Blacks who escaped north or west from 1920-1940, known as The Great Migration. There were good jobs up north in the auto factories of Detroit, the breweries in Milwaukee, and the steel mills of Pittsburgh. You could walk on the same side of the street as a white woman comforted by the fact you won’t be lynched. Those who stayed behind had a different reality.

In March of 1955, a teenaged Black girl refused to yield her seat to a white man, an egregious violation of the Jim Crow caste system. Dr. King and his compatriots opted to let this one go because they did not think it was wise to use a minor to launch their fight for civil rights. Instead, 9 months later a young African-American woman refused to move to the back of the bus when the White section filled up. Rosa Parks was arrested in violation of the Alabama Segregation code. This incident led to the Montgomery public bus boycott which lasted over a year. 75% of the passengers on Montgomery busses were Black and as a result, the city of Montgomery suffered a significant shortfall of revenue. Meanwhile, the boycotters walked to and from work and formed car pools to get around. Their resolve was stronger than the hate they faced.

On the night of January 30, 1956, only a month into the boycott, Coretta King and a friend were sitting in the front room of the modest parsonage adjacent to the church when they thought they heard a brick bounce on the front porch. Just as Mrs. King and her friend reached the guest room in the back, a bomb exploded on the front porch shaking the house and leaving shattered glass, smoke, and debris where they had just been sitting. When Dr. King arrived, he was greeted by an angry mob toting shotguns and torches. Somehow, Dr. King managed to quell the crowd and everyone went home.

When we arrived at the Dexter Street Parsonage, we were greeted by a woman called Liberty, no lie. We toured the small house and Liberty pointed out the cracks in the wall caused by the explosion and the gunpowder residue on the porch still visible decades later and a testament to the power of the bomb. We saw Dr. King’s office with his yellowed diploma from divinity school and some of Dr. King’s other effects; we ended the tour at a small table in the kitchen. We were chit chatting away when Liberty said, “Well, it’s time for the highlight of the tour” and she opened the cupboard and removed a cassette player, again, no lie. My kids were like, “what is that thing” and I had to go into a different history lesson that “before I-phones....” As I was trying to explain the concept of a tape (No! It doesn’t stick to anything!), Liberty slipped a cassette into the player and turned it on.

After a few squacks and squeeks, we heard the unmistakable baritone of Dr. King’s voice. The tape was of a speech that Dr. King gave shortly after the terrorists bombed his house on that January evening. He said that he couldn’t sleep so he got out of bed to have a cup of coffee. He described how he was sitting at his kitchen table in the parsonage digesting the events of the past few weeks and he was trying to figure out his next move. I was sitting in the same chair at the same table where he was dissecting this quandary. He talked about how he didn’t ask for this, he didn’t move to Montgomery to revolutionize the world and he was scared for the health and safety of his family; yet, he had no choice but to soldier on and fight the good fight. The energy in that room was palpable and though Liberty had probably heard that speech hundreds of times, she still had to wipe a tear from her eye...we all did.

That trip impacted me a big way and it wasn’t that we did the “one of each” when confronted with desserts at Commander’s.

It opened a new door in my understanding of how others have struggled and fought and died for freedoms that we now take for granted. I began to realize and appreciate that I was more privileged than Jay based on the color of my skin; some of you no doubt like to deny that White privilege isn’t real but what is undeniable is that Blacks did not have the same rights as Whites 100 years after slavery ended. Black Unprivilege was without a doubt real; all one must do is review the codified sanction of racism contained in Jim Crow’s toolkit. Think about it...they wanted CIVIL rights, not equal...just civil...can we just be civil people? Can we be respectful of all of G-d's children? To the extent you believe in god, or a higher power or whatever it is, does he/she play favorites? Does god prefer one group of people over another? Civility is lost...our rights trump our responsibilities and civil discourse disappeared with that black and white TV that aired the Detroit riots. We can disagree folks and it makes no sense and strains every iota of logic I can muster to think that any two people will ever agree on everything. That's OK. We don't have to agree on everything and life would be pretty boring if we did. This truism is as real and obvious as the extremists's misguided passion...on both sides. United we stand, divided we fall and the events of the last few weeks, months, and years clearly illustrate our division and the unstable territory on which our democracy treads. The star bellied sneetches are not better than the other sneetches.

Be well.