It was August 28, 1963. Mom was yelling and holding up her “Martin Luther King, a liar, a troublemaker” sign. Next to her were my brother and my dad, they just mumbled and cursed. While everyone cheered and jumped for joy when Dr. King uttered the words, “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood”, it was like my whole family rolled their eyes simultaneously.
All but me, I was the only one who thought that every man should have equal rights regardless of their race, beliefs, gender (etc… ). I sided with the rest of the people at the Lincoln Memorial who believed in equal rights. My whole family hated Dr. King. They never wanted equality, they never wanted peace, they never wanted justice for the black people of America. They wanted everything to stay the same in our country. This probably being because my family, many years ago, owned a multitude of slaves. They believed and taught their children to believe that all colored people should never be considered equal to anyone.
My parents taught me from a very young age that if I ever saw a black man approaching me, to run as fast as I could in the other direction. And of course, “blacks aren’t good enough to be worth something in this world, they’re only here to work for us”. My brother Austin, always listened and believed whatever my parents told him. So when they told him that black people were bad, selfish, stupid, hateful (etc.. ), whenever he went out into town or anywhere away from the house, he would go out of his way to beat up any black man, woman or child that he saw.
Me on the other hand, I always pretended to hate black people and I always listened to my parents. The thing that they didn’t know was that I actually thought that the colored people should have the same rights hat whites have. Now of course, if I told this to my parents, I would’ve been disowned 9or so I thought), so I just pretended like I had the same opinion as them. It wasn’t until I was about 15 years old that I started to try to stand up for colored people (or at least in my own mind). I saw a newspaper about this guy that was a human rights activist and wanted equal rights for blacks and whites just like I did.
The summer of 1963 was when I started to research and find out as much as I could about Dr. King and what he wanted to do in America. I started to become obsessed with his work, and I finally decided to try to tell my arents how I felt about colored people. When I told my parents, “I-l-I thinkk that… all people should have… equal right- ts”, they thought I was kidding. Then I said I was serious and they ignored me for a good couple of days. Then we got a newspaper talking about Dr. King’s speech in D. C.
My parents want to go to express their hate for Dr. King and colored people, and of course I wanted to go because of how much I believed in my opinion and wanted to be in front of Dr. King and feel his passion and powerful words. They didn’t mind driving an hour and 15 minutes from Clarke County Virginia to Washington D. C. My parents agreed to let me go as long as they could go as well. One thing about my parents that I greatly appreciated was that they let me believe in my own opinions as I became older. When we arrived in D. C, we immediately had to park our car because there was no way that we could’ve driven through the enormous crowd of people.
And what does my dad do as soon as he sees the black men, women and children walking to the Lincoln Memorial (? ), he says “Look at all of these worthless negroes. I bet they’re here for some kind of charity to go along with Dr. whatever his name is(‘s) speech”. “Dad, you know they’re not. Why do you have to say those things? “. He never responded, he just kept walking with his “Dr. King :a worthless & incompetent negro” sign, and mom with her sign as well, and Austin with his baseball bat to try to scare off some negro kids.
When we got to the Lincoln Memorial, I stood as close to the podium where Dr. King would give his speech as I could, which was also the farthest away I could get from my family. The last thing I wanted was to be seen with them. Instead I stood next to a black family that consisted of three children around the ages of 5, 8, and 12, a very wise looking mother. I wondered where heir father/ husband was, since it seemed like every other black family there had two parents and at least one child. Then Dr. King arrived, everyone became silent, and then started to cheer as loud as possible.
Then he began, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emanci-“, then all I could hear from about 50 feet away were these people screaming hateful things about Dr. King. He kept speaking, but all I could hear was my family… The woman and the family I had been standing next to, went back to my family and asked them to please stop their hateful remarks. She explained that her husband died trying to protect her and their children a couple of months ago from “a few white folks like yourselves”.
Then she asked them again to please stop screaming, and so they did. The rest of the speech was empowering and made me want to change the world, or at least take part in some kind of human rights and equality activist movement. After the speech, the woman and her children saw how much I had been enjoying the speech and asked if I would like to take part in the civil rights and equality walk. So i asked my parents if I could, and they, to my surprise, said yes.
So l tayed with that woman and her family for at least a couple of hours around Washington D. C. I couldn’t stop think about the speech on the way home, when I got home, after I had been home for a few days, and even years after the speech. The spring of 1968 was the year I had decided to try to make a difference in the world. Just as soon as I almost had a plan together about how I was going to start doing so, I heard on the news that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. This only pushed me to think of and to do greater things. By the summer of 1969, my 21 years of living on the earth finally meant something to me. I had felt like I had done what I was put on the earth to do.
Even at age 68, I still think about Dr. King’s speech. One quote in particular stands out to me, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. “. I believe that now, in this day and age, most people consider all men to be created equal, or they at least act like they do. That was my belief since I was a young girl: all men and women should be considered equal no matter the race, education, religion (etc.. ), and I am very satisfied with my country.
