Martin Luther King Day--Not Just An Extra Paid Vacation Day!

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This is something I wrote for Epinions yesterday (i.e. Sunday, January 20, the day before this year's Martin Luther King Day). http://www.epinions.com/content_5161066628 Before I had posted it there, it had been my response to a discussion posted at Invisible Youth Network's online community. http://invisibleyouth.thevillage.com/ For some people reading this, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. might be just another dead man to learn about in history class and the times he lived in might seem like prehistoric times to you because, no matter what your color is, you take for granted being allowed to do certain things in life. However, you don't really mind having a three-day weekend, so why not celebrate some dead guy's birthday? I grew up during that time--but White, so I didn't have to put up with what I'm about to describe to you. But it did mean that I saw it with my own eyes. Perhaps, some of you remember this firsthand, too. Others of you might just know about it either from history books or from stories passed down to you by family and friends who remember. I hope that you'll want to share your thoughts about Martin Luther King here. For now, let's go back in time now to the summer of 1963... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9JwveKr_Rc Martin Luther King Day--Not Just An Extra Paid Vacation Day! Jan 20 '08 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Bottom Line Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been gone over 40 years. Perhaps, to some who don't remember those times, tomorrow is just another paid holiday. Hopefully, not... ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Too often, the focus seems to be on having a three-day holiday without giving too much thought to WHY we are! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made a very important contribution to life here in the USA. I can still remember a time when I traveled through the South on family vacations and would see those signs reading White Men, White Women, and Colored on facilities at gas stations. One day, I decided to take a look at the Colored restroom to see what it looked like. For starters, it was an outhouse instead of a flushing facility with water for washing your hands. Nothing much wrong with the idea of an outhouse (other than not having a place to wash one's hands), as I was used to using one of those when I went to visit my grandparents. Of course, I could go into the house and wash my hands. In fact, my grandparents also had indoor plumbing, but the outhouse was just more fun. For one thing, several of us girls and ladies used it at the same time with some of us doing our business and others of us either waiting for a hole to open up or else simply hanging around afterwards. But it was a great place to gab. The only thing I saw wrong with that was that it was unequal to the facilities provided for White people. It was also unisex. These days, lots of public restrooms are unisex when they're either single-occupant or else what's known as a family restroom. Back then, however, public restrooms generally weren't unisex--and, even if they were, they would have locking doors. This restroom had no lock on the door. I imagined how mortified I'd be to be using such a bathroom and having some boy from school come along and open the door on me! Didn't they think that "Colored" people had a right to modesty? Obviously, not! They were just like animals in a zoo where people could go along and look at them in their cages, and the animals would have no privacy from somebody watching them going to the bathroom. The final thing I noticed was that there was no toilet paper in there. If you were in there just to do Number One, that wouldn't be such a disaster. But what if you had to do Number Two--or, worse yet, be dealing with the runs where you'd really be sloppy!?! If I were a "Colored" girl, I'd be a mess--bad enough at the age of ten, but it seemed totally horrible that even people the age of my mom, dad, aunts, uncles, and grandparents would be dealing with the same sort of situation. However, that questionable unisex outhouse lacking lock and paper was just one concern that families and individuals of color dealt with when traveling through the South back in 1963. There were other concerns such as finding restaurants where they'd be welcome to eat and motels where they could stay and do the things that I, as a White girl, took for granted: Sleep in a bed Watch TV Shower Change clothes Use a bathroom where some stranger wouldn't be busting in on me--and having toilet paper and, of course... Swimming I remember that one thing we'd be looking for when we traveled was a motel with a swimming pool, and it wouldn't be very long after we checked in that I would be out there in it! And it didn't even matter if you were a famous person. If you were Ray Charles, Dionne Warwick, James Brown, The Supremes, The Temptations, or Sidney Poitier, you still had to think about where you were going to eat and sleep--and you had to plan where to use the restroom so that you wouldn't end up with one of those disgusting lockless & paperless unisex outhouses. Today, it's easy for people of any color to take for granted that traveling through the South gives you access to any motel where there's a vacancy and any restaurant that's open. Some of the Black people traveling today over this three-day holiday might not give it a second thought when checking into a Comfort Inn and joining fellow travelers in the pool or the whirlpool. Perhaps, you're having a wedding reception at a Holiday Inn down that way, and everybody is making you feel at home even though you and your spouse don't have the same color of skin. For these kinds of experiences, we need to remember to say "Thank You" to a courageous man who stuck his neck out during a time when it was life-threatening to do so and said those inspiring words that will keep ringing down through the ages: "I have a dream!"