Chicken Soup for the African American Woman's Soul (29 page)

Coretta Scott King

I was only ten years old when Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated and do not remember experiencing overt discrimination. I did not drink from colored water fountains or sit in the balcony at movies. I have heard horrendous stories from relatives, seen movies and read books about the civil rights struggle, but I grew up in a Northern city, attended integrated schools and counted my white classmates as friends. I recognize that I have benefited from the civil rights movement, but outside of paying NAACP dues, making a conscious effort to be aware of black history and instilling a sense of pride in my children, I did not feel there was much I could do to advance Dr. King's dream. I am not an attorney, politician or religious leader, and while I have run into an occasional bigot, the overwhelming majority of my interactions with whites has been positive. What impact could I, a “regular person,” have? That question was answered when I visited the museum.

I must admit I lived in Memphis almost two years before I visited the National Civil Rights Museum. We have a tendency to undervalue things in our own backyard. As a newcomer to Memphis, the Beale Street clubs were first on my list of things to see and do. I saw Graceland and Elvis's plane, the
Lisa Marie
. I went to one of the biggest events in the city, the annual Southern Heritage Classic between Jackson State University and Tennessee State University. The football game and concerts give the city a festive spirit all weekend. I had even found flea markets I liked to scour for hidden treasures.

And, I'll confess, I visited the nearby casinos in Tunica more than once. I did all of these things before I visited the National Civil Rights Museum. But once I went, I couldn't believe it had taken me so long to tour this important landmark.

Images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., permeate our society. More Americans can recite his “I Have a Dream” speech than the Constitution.We commemorate his life on the third Monday in January. But in all of this celebration, Dr. King has been placed on a pedestal, and we tend to forget he was a real person. He was a great, anointed man.

Yet still a man. A visit to the National Civil Rights Museum reminds me of his humanity and reveals how important the actions of “regular people” can be.

The first thing that strikes me about the museum is the neighborhood. When I first turned onto the street the museum is on, I thought,
This is it?
The National Civil Rights Museum is not housed in a fancy edifice with columns and marbled halls. The museum is located at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. King's assassination. It is not on a major street and is not in the best part of town. The neighborhood is now being revitalized, but even in 1968, I am sure more prestigious accommodations were available. Segregation downtown had ended, and there are hotels with scenic views of the mighty Mississippi River that would have been more worthy. This man had dined with kings and presidents. He had won a Nobel Peace Prize and was revered by millions. Yet he stayed in a two-story motel in a working–class area of town. It is reported that he stayed in this motel to be closer to the working people—the “regular people” he had come to help. This neighborhood is tangible evidence of his humility.

The next thing I notice is the vehicle parked in front of the museum. It is a white 1967 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. This is the vehicle he was driven in when he came to Memphis. We often think of him as the “dreamer.” We see him marching in Selma, giving a speech in the nation's capital and being heckled in Chicago. His image is associated with pivotal moments in history, and it's as if he floated from place to place. He did not float. He needed transportation to get to all these places. That Cadillac reminds me of his humanity.

Inside the museum, we climb a flight of stairs and walk single file into 1968. We speak in hushed tones, as if we have entered a church sanctuary. Mahalia Jackson's stirring contralto is in the background and seems to waft down from heaven. We are on hallowed ground. Even children, who have been antsy in other parts of the tour, quiet down.

The tour guide has ushered us just steps away from where Dr. King had his last meal. The bed is unmade. A coffee cup and ashtray sit next to his room service tray. The room looks as though its resident has just stepped out for a moment. But this is Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee, the last place Dr. King slept.

Room 306 is a sparse room with modest furniture. After the speeches, interviews and crowds, he returned to a room like this, rather than to his home and family. He not only sacrificed his life, he sacrificed precious time with his wife and children. I often travel for my job. That travel is a way to provide for my family, and the objective is a paycheck. Would I endure the road if the reward were not going to be financial? Would I leave my comfortable home and family to face violence and hostility? I am grateful I don't have to answer those questions because Dr. King and others made the sacrifice for me.

Room 306 is also evidence of his honesty and commitment to his calling. Dr. King and Reverend Ralph Abernathy shared a room. In these days when so many religious leaders are viewed with suspicion regarding their financial motives, and scandals plague so many charitable organizations, it is refreshing to know that Dr.

King's motives were genuine. He stayed in a modest motel and shared a room to save money. He had an honorable calling and did not try to profit from it.

This hotel also demonstrates to me that Dr. King understood economics. We have gone from fighting for the right to sit on the bus, to the right to drive the bus, to the right to own the bus company. Legal obstacles to black entrepreneurship have been removed. The Lorraine Motel was black-owned and during segregation offered blacks a nice place to stay. Dr. King demonstrated that just because we had the right to stay where we wanted, we should not forsake businesses in our own neighborhoods. The “Mountaintop” and “I Have a Dream” speeches are his most quoted, but Dr. King preached black economic empowerment long before it was fashionable. Not only did he preach it, his stay at the Lorraine Motel shows me he lived it.

Although Room 306 is the centerpiece of the museum, there are many other exhibits ranging from the slave trade to a chronicle of lynching. I learn something new each time I visit. On one visit I looked closely at some pictures and saw a woman hanging from a tree. I never knew women were lynched, and her picture haunts me. I feel a kinship with this black woman and wonder about her life. There is a replica of the Montgomery bus where Rosa Parks was arrested. I knew black people had to sit in the back, but I didn't know that blacks had to pay their money, then get off the bus and go to the back door to get on. I get mad just thinking about it. Maybe this is why I took so long to visit the museum. I didn't want to get all stirred up, then have to go to work and smile at white folks.

But this isn't a place that will leave African Americans upset and depressed. The exhibits generate a sense of pride. I am proud to be part of a legacy of people who endured so much, yet survived and thrived. I am proud, but I also feel a little guilty. When I see what others have gone through, I feel guilty that I am not doing more. When I see the Rosa Parks exhibit and see how the Montgomery residents walked and carpooled, in heels, for months, rather than ride segregated buses, I feel guilty that I won't drive an extra few miles to patronize a black business because it is out of my way. When I see the Freedom Riders exhibit and the sacrifices made for the right to vote, I feel guilty about the times I skipped voting because it was “just a primary,” or I had to work late. When I see the sparse room that this great man stayed in, I think about how he sacrificed time with his children and spent time in rooms like this, and I feel guilty that I don't spend more time reviewing the civil rights struggle with my own children.

Each visit to the museum is a wake-up call for me. It's like the sense of renewal you feel after an inspiring church service. I enjoy taking visiting friends and relatives. I have gained an appreciation for the humanity of Dr. King and the contributions of “regular people” to the civil rights movement. After each visit to the museum, I wake up from complacency and recommit myself not to take things such as voting, public education or even my job for granted. I recommit myself not just to remembering the past, but trying to improve the present and the future. I make a special effort to patronize black businesses. I donate time and money to worthy causes. I hope my efforts will serve as a tribute to the lynched black woman in the picture. These are things a “regular person” like me can do to make Dr. King's dream a reality.

Phyllis R. Dixon

Shades of Black and White

I
t doesn't matter what you've been through,
where you come from, who your parents are—
nor your social or economic status. None of that
matters. What matters is how you choose to love,
how you choose to express that love through your
work, family and what you have to give the
world . . . own your power and your glory.

Oprah Winfrey

Tied down, my arms outstretched, I lay motionless on the gurney. I thought to myself,
I came into this world
stretched out on a cross, maybe that's how I will die
. Helpless and afraid, being prepped for surgery, the events of my life began to replay in my mind.

I remembered my mama telling me stories about my birth. I had been strapped down before when my mother first received me. I was literally tied to a cross because, during my birth, both of my collarbones were broken as I was yanked out of the birth canal.

My Negro mama was significantly overweight, but her chocolate skin and dazzling good looks revealed a fiery and attractive woman. It was a long while before my mama could holdme. She didn't know at the time that the doctors were patching me up. Finally, the nurse brought in two Caucasian redheaded twin girls and handed them to her.

Naturally Mama put them to her breast and they suckled.

Perhaps a half hour or so had gone by when a nurse frantically returned to the room red-faced and apologizing. “Oh, Mother Roberts,” she cried. “I'm so sorry. These are not your babies. Please forgive me—and please don't tell the mother across the hall that you nursed them,” she pleaded.

The mother across the hall was a white woman, and the hospital did not want to be liable if the woman were to adamantly protest. They could imagine that even litigation might occur.

Mama agreed. “Okay,” she said. “But don't bring me no
black
baby,” she insisted.

A few minutes later I was brought in, white-skinned and tied to a cross.

My mama's reply was, “Well, she's all broke-up, but she's pretty.” As my mother recounted the story, I couldn't imagine how confused that nurse must have been. My mother, the oldest girl of five siblings, had the darkest skin color of the girls in her family. Her father would irately address her as “Black Gal.”

When I grew up, and you called somebody “black,” them was “fightin'” words.

It was not until her father was sick and on his deathbed that he asked for his daughter's forgiveness. But by then, it was too late. My mama had already determined that there was something very wrong with her skin color and that having dark skin was a curse—a curse big enough to make even your own father treat you differently.

As I lay on the gurney waiting to be cut open, my mind's eye quickly flashed to the Detroit race riots of 1943.

The riot of '67 was pale in comparison. It was reported that a pregnant woman on a streetcar was shot and killed through the window because they thought she was a white woman. She wasn't. And a white woman aboard another streetcar discreetly hid a black man under the skirt of her dress to keep him from being killed. What courage and tenacity this woman demonstrated.

This color thing is insane. Where did this notion come from?
I pondered as I lay motionless. Blacks killing whites, whites killing blacks, skin color judged by both blacks and whites—it all seemed crazy to me.

I turned my reminiscence from my mother's childhood to my own. At the turn of the twentieth century my immigrant father traveled by water from Sicily to New York's Ellis Island. Eventually he came to Detroit, where he owned a neighborhood grocery store. Even though my parents were not married nor did they live together, we were never hungry.

I was born in 1924 to a single-parent Negro mother and an Italian father. In those days it was, without a doubt, a disgrace to give birth to a child out of wedlock. It was equally shameful for the child. Even though growing up mulatto and without a true father-daughter relationship brought me pain, there were many times that I'd say, “Mama, I don't care how I got here. I am glad I'm here.”

I was happy she chose to have me and that I was alive regardless of the circumstances, but I hated school. The name-calling was cruel. I have been called every derogatory name you can think of and, thank God, I am now immune to all of them.

Even though I was light-skinned, dark-skinned colored girls were my best friends because, like me, they were ostracized and considered outcasts of society. The so-called respectable children (born in marriage) could not stay outside when I was out playing. Their mothers would call them inside.

My mind began to wander from the more painful memories to thoughts of the many good things about growing up in those times. Flickering images of growing up on Hastings and St. Antoine danced in my mind.