"Fifty years ago, if you shook my hand,
I would have been hanged," said Martin Luther King, Jr.'s barber, still gripping my hand, which I had extended to him.
We were in Montgomery, Alabama, sitting on a bus that had been in service in 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat at the front of the bus to a white man. The occasion was the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery on October 23, 2005.
The next day, on October 24, Rosa Parks died.
"Fifty years ago, if you had sat down beside me,
I would have been shot," said an elderly African American woman, looking straight into my eyes as I settled into the seat beside her.
We were in Detroit, Michigan, on our way to Greater Grace Temple Church for the funeral of Rosa Parks, riding a city bus from the gathering point at the Michigan State Fairgrounds because, due to security, no one was allowed to park at the church where the celebration of Rosa's life was to occur.
Fifty years ago was 1955.
1955 was the year (in December) when Rosa Parks' refusal to move from her seat initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted 381 days and became an iconic symbol of African American unification against racial segregation in the heart of Dixie.
1955 was also the year (in August) when 14-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi, by two white men for, supposedly, wolf-whistling at the wife of one of Till's murderers.
Even though the boy's face and head were beaten, shot through, and mutilated beyond recognition, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted that his body be shown in an open casket at a public funeral so that the thousands who attended could see the cruelty that one human, fueled by racial hatred, had done to another.
This event -- 93 years after the end of the Civil War and 92 years after the Emancipation Proclamation -- is viewed as the start of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
In 1955, Kalamazoo, Michigan, resident Moses Walker heard his mother repeatedly declare that he and his brothers were to "never set foot in Mississippi." Mrs. Walker had been born there; she had seen black men lynched and left hanging from tree limbs. "That's the way it was at that time," Moses explained.
In 1955, Lewis Walker (no relation to Moses Walker) was growing up in Selma, Alabama, noted for the beatings of civil rights marchers by sheriff deputies on "Bloody Sunday" (March 7, 1965) and then, three weeks later (March 21), the beginning of the successful civil rights march, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to Montgomery.
Lewis also went to high school in Birmingham, Alabama, where he played baseball with Willie Mays (All-Star centerfielder for the San Francisco Giants and New York Mets). Lewis said that Mays' father, William Howard Mays, "was an even better athlete, but he never got to play professional baseball because he was black." That's the way it was back then.
Back then, white segregationists chanted, "Two, four, six, eight. We don't want to integrate."
Back then, southerners attributed growing unrest in the South to "outside instigators from the North ... trying to tell us what to do."
Back then, their view was that "our niggers" are happy and satisfied with "the way it is."
But, of course, that notion was not true ... as exemplified by the more than 200,000 people who attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.
There, Dr. King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which concluded with words from the great Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
These few examples represent the sentiment of segregationists and the emotion of civil rights activists of that time ... from 1955 to 1968 when, on April 4, Dr. King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.
One week later, on April 11, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing throughout the U.S.
This was also the environment into which I immersed myself from November 12 to 19, 2016, on the
Living Legacy Pilgrimage. Hosted by the
Living Legacy Project, an organization whose vision is to "build a vital and unique bridge from the past to the present, and into the future ... so the stories of the ancestors can fuel a commitment to making racial justice a reality, if not in our time, then in the generations to come."
This is the second in a series of articles about my experiences on the Living Legacy Pilgrimage.
Next blog: "The march for justice continues"
Travel Tip: When in Memphis, Tennessee, visit the
National Civil Rights Museum, formerly the Lorraine Hotel where Dr. King was murdered. Allow at least four to six hours. The displays are fantastic; the historical knowledge is profound.
The Living Legacy Pilgrimage
is a powerful, eye-opening, mind-expanding experience into the depths of segregation, racism, and injustice inflicted by White supremacists onto African Americans from the end of slavery to the mid-1900s.
It is also rife with courage and determination by those who physically and vocally resisted injustices. Thus, it is an inspiration for citizens today to continue the ongoing struggle for justice and equality now.
