(This is a great post that we are happy to promote (it doesn't even come off as a candidate post). That's in stark contrast to say, Nelda Spears using the MLK, Jr. holiday as an excuse for an email fundraising solicitation. Tacky. - promoted by BOR)
I turned seventeen in 1968. I was a junior in high school. And I was at a new high school, in a new neighborhood, because my old neighborhood had been integrated.
It may seem indelicate for me to say that, but it's important to remember the turmoil of those times. My family had lived in northeast Houston all my school life, but then in 66 or 67 black people started moving into the neighborhood. There were kids I had known all my life who started going out at night in gangs, looking for black kids to beat up. I was disgusted with them. And one night when I was walking down a neighborhood street, a gang of black kids jumped out of the back of a pickup and beat me up. I was disgusted with them, too. Some black kids harassed my sister. My parents were scared, and they moved us to southwest Houston.
So I was at a new school, M.B. Lamar. I was a working class kid going to school with the River Oaks kids, some of the most privileged kids in Texas. I didn't fit in very well.
Even so, I had hope. Our country was changing. It was changing in blood and flame, but it was changing. We were going to eliminate racism and poverty. Then the irrational spoke.
The irrational had spoken before, in Dallas in 1963. In November 1963, I was a Boy Scout, one of a handful chosen to be part of the honor guard for President John Kennedy on his visit to Houston. Something came up, and President Kennedy couldn't come, but Mayor Cutrer was there. The next day the President was struck down. But Lyndon Johnson became president, and he went to work to eliminate racism and poverty. But for some reason, people rioted anyway. And then the war in Vietnam swallowed everything else.
But in 1968 there was new hope. Martin Luther King was speaking out for justice, and Bobby Kennedy was speaking out for fairness, and Bobby was running for president. Then the irrational spoke. |
| It spoke first in Memphis. Martin Luther King was struck down. I couldn't believe it. I was afraid, like everyone, of more blood and flames. But Bobby Kennedy gave voice to reason and hope, and it seemed that we might be okay.
It spoke again in Los Angeles. Bobby Kennedy was struck down. And hope died. Someone screamed, "They're killing everybody!"
Lyndon Johnson, when he passed the Civil Rights Act, commented that he was losing the South for the Democratic Party for a generation. He was right. In 1968, Republican Richard Nixon was elected president. There was a bleak generation to come.
Some time in those bleak decades, I learned about Mohandas K. Gandhi-the Mahatma. I learned about Satyagraha-holding fast to truth. And I learned about where Martin Luther King had found his inspiration.
Two decades later, in 1988, a black man ran for the Democratic nomination for president. I was a Jesse Jackson delegate to the state party convention. And on the way to the national convention, Jackson found some of his greatest voting strength in the South. But he didn't win the nomination, and the Democratic party didn't win the South. Not even an Arkansas nominee or a Tennessee nominee could win the South.
Now it's four decades since the irrational spoke to Martin Luther King (and to Bobby Kennedy). And again, after two decades, a black man is running for the Democratic nomination for President. And he's talking about hope. The world has changed a lot since 1968, and since 1988. But there is a hope that was never fulfilled. And it is being stirred again. |
