Daughter 1 & I (and this year Daughter 2) had this conversation. We've had it almost every year since Daughter 1's started school. It starts with this question:
Mom? Why is Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday?
Daughter 1 (and now Daughter 2) doesn't get that there was a time in this country that we thought of African Americans as inferior human beings. They don't understand that there was a time when they would not have gotten to go to school with some of their friends just because their friends look different than we do. They don't understand that there is hatred - not based on personality or actions - but on looks alone.
They dont' understand.
I'd like to think that The Dad and I are raising them to have open minds and open hearts to their fellow man.
I'd like to think that it's all because of mine and The Dad's desire to have all human beings treated with dignity and respect. ALL human beings.
I'd like to think that it's because of our own practices within our own lives that reflect our desire to accept and be accepted as people of value.
However, I know all of our "so-fine parenting skills" would not be possible if it had not been for the pathway paved by many of our civil rights advocates, namely Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The conversation always rolls around to this question:
Is Martin Luther King, Jr. still alive?
And I tell them that he was shot down in the prime of his life by a man who hated him and his message of equality and respect and freedom.
After the understandable shock and horror and sadness over a senseless killing, our conversation always ends the same way too:
I just don't understand...
And for the sake of generations to come, and so the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. will not be in vain, I hope and pray they NEVER understand...
...When we let freedom ring,
when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day
when all of God's children,
black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands
and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,
"Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
