MLK

I was in high school on the spring day MLK was assassinated. About 25% of the school population was black; they reacted viscerally, leaving classes, moving en masse through hallways, breaking courtyard windows and glass display cases, creating pandemonium until police arrived to restore order.

Our Student Council president was black. His maternal twin brother was a star on our football team. They were very popular. I thought of their position, popularity, and reputation as a sign of respect for them and their race -- something for our school and town to be proud of at a time of increased confrontation nationally between whites and blacks.

I considered each of them a friend; that changed on the day MLK was murdered. White was the color of hatred that James Earl Ray had painted over my race that day. What friendship we had died with MLK.

I lived a few blocks from a black neighborhood. Segregation by real estate sales practice and home affordability replaced more obvious past efforts. My home, in a white neighborhood one house away from a pharmaceutical plant and across the street from two of its parking lots, was not great prize. Our physical and economic closeness to a segregated section made me, I think, more understanding of the situation of blacks than was typical.

A best friend lived in the middle of the black neighborhood. His was the only white family on the block, in a run-down home with his three siblings and widowed mother. Across the street was a grammar school that served that neighborhood, its student population almost entirely black.

Having a friend in the neighborhood gave me more than a passing acquaintance with people who lived there. It helped transform predisposed ideas about race absorbed from family and the predominantly white town I had moved from, and I became invested in the idea of racial equality.

Said transformation was neither immediate or complete. Vestiges of learned attitudes and behavior do not so easily fade -- but grew less and less with time, and I may have realized the fulfillment of that transformation with the pride I felt when our nation elected its first black president.

Today, on the holiday that honors MLK, I think of the times I spoke to hundreds of eighth-grade students about MLK's death and my experience that day in my youth.

I taught there, and we decided to celebrate MLK by devoting the day to activities intended to inform about his contribution to racial equality and understanding. It seemed disrespectful to remain open on that day at first, but it was clear that many "honored" MLK by going to the mall, and we did something much more substantive and informative for students, especially in their economically advantaged, upper-class, nearly-all-white community.

My speech intended to make clear the wrong that had been done the day of his death, the work that had been cut short, and the bravery and determination and struggle to right wrongs that had been in place so long they threatened permanence.

Our students were respectful; silent for the ten or twelve minutes that I spoke. When I described, with some graphic detail, the moment of MLK's death, I could see the impact in their faces as students were brought into uncomfortable familiarity with that horror. Following my first such address to the class, colleagues asked me to make it a part of that day each year. Quite comfortable speaking before any of my classes, I was not entirely at ease before hundreds of students and many of my colleagues, but I agreed because it seemed necessary to connect the past to the lives of these students and their understanding of the holiday devoted to MLK.

I strove to speak in my own voice, offering an honest account of both my experience when I was about their age. It must have been good enough; I delivered the speech, with minor variations, repeatedly and was invited to return to continue the practice after I retired until the school district chose to close schools for the holiday.

Life changes, like the decision to close for the holiday. For a time, on MLK's day, I made a positive difference in young minds. It is one way that we build, however slowly, a better future.