As a way of observing Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday, let's establish this diary as a memory wall--a place to put your memories, comments, and recollections of Dr. King and tell us how he has affected your life.
More below:
My own memories of Dr. King are vague as I was quite young. I lived in a very suburban, white world. Even so, I always believed we were all equal. I remember watching the marches and the riots on TV and being frightened by the images. I remember the rumors about Dr. King pushed by Hoover in an attempt to smear Dr. King. I must admit I was more aware of Bobby Kennedy and more inspired at that time by him.
But growing up, learning more about our history, reading more about Dr. King, I grew to admire him and his philosophy and his actions more and more. My admiration of him is inseparable now from my deep feelings about meeting James Farmer and Barbara Jordan and getting the chance to hear Jesse Jackson several times. And about my trip to Memphis where I went on an African-American history tour of the city with a prominent civil rights activist. I saw the Mason Temple where Dr. King gave his last speech--which still shakes me--he knew he was going to die. And about my visit to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. If you don't know about this museum, it is in the Lorraine Motel when Dr. King was assassinated. The front of the building and the two rooms he stayed in are exactly the way they were on that fateful day. The museum is interactive and one of those places that after you leave, you don't want to talk to anyone for at least a couple of hours, it is that life affecting. You walk down a hall where they have a life-sized film playing of the marches and the police response of blasting the marchers with firehoses. It is chilling to see it that close, that big. There's just so much there--but the part that resonated the most with me was the gallery of portraits of all of the people killed in the battle for civil rights in this country. As I gazed at the pictures, I found myself face-to-face with a white woman, who was exactly my age as I stood there. She had been driveing African-Americans to the polls on election day. When the polls closed, she offered to give a young black man a ride home. Her car was pulled over and both of them were shot, point blank, in the head. She left three children. As I looked at her, I questioned if I could ever be that brave--as brave as all these beautiful people whose faces looked out at me. I use this story in my classes--I tell my college students that they ought to be ashamed if they are too damned blaze to vote and that they better get off their asses--to honor those who died to give them this right, and of the need to continue to fight for the rights of all Americans