| | Yesterday, I went to the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum with Jeffrey, and a large number of other people. They have free admission on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It was cold, REALLY cold in Birmingham, and I don't think any of us expected to have to queue the way we did, yet all of us stood in line, and waited patiently.
It was worth it, but I wasn't prepared for the emotions the museum engendered in me. I expected certain things, of course, but I was caught off guard by how I as a mother reacted to the choices parents had to make in the 1960's. I listened to a woman talk about being one of the kids hosed down in the park across the street, and another talk about joining the march to Montgomery, I think she said, after the marchers camped out behind her school. Those stories were interesting, but somewhat out of context for me.
I eavesdropped on another woman, standing in front of a display about integrating the high school, as she told her friend she was supposed to go to that school, that only good students got to go, and she was a straight A student, but she didn't want to go, and her parents didn't want her to go because they were afraid, "they'd get her."
They'd get her.
I saw the pictures of the girls killed as they went to church at the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, the "four little girls" as they are typically referred to, and realized three of them were the same age as my daughter is right now, and the fourth was the same age as my son.
Those parents didn't choose to put their children in harm's way; they were simply going to church. But I looked at the Church (also across from the museum) and realized those babies died, and created the opportunity for my babies to exist. But other parents did choose to put their children in harm's way, by fighting for their right to attend schools where they all knew they would be targeted, by encouraging, or allowing them to participate in marches that so often culminated in violent reprisals. These parents knew what they were doing, what they were asking of their children, what the danger was.
Would I choose the same, or would I choose like the parents of the woman I overheard? At that moment, all I could think was how glad I was that I didn't have to choose.
Later on as we sat in a wonderfully integrated barbecue joint, the televisions were almost all tuned to news channels, showing the crowds milling about DC on the eve of the most historic inauguration possibly ever. But I was distracted by a headline on the crawl that another group of Pakistani girls were attacked on their way to school.
And I realized, parents in Pakistan are making the same decisions parents in Birmingham faced 45 years ago.
The world is very small, and has too many people in it who hate.
I would stop there, on a poignant yet depressing thought, but there was something else that happened in the Civil Rights Museum. Jeffrey, who is researching a book on race and class, got overwhelmed at the sight of a Klan robe. He was unprepared for his reaction, and it's hard for him to even verbalize the reaction. I held him off to the side of the display hall as he quietly sobbed. A black man came up to him, placed his hand on his shoulder and said, "It's okay, man. We've come so far."
Yes we have. And we--the world--still have so far to go. But when two people who could have been enemies 45 years ago can stand together in Birmingham and console each other for the atrocities of the past with an eye to future, then I believe that we will get there.
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| | Posted 1/20/2009 1:54 PM - 150 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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