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This coming week we will remember one of the highlights of the Civil Rights Movement which changed so much in this country. It is such an emotional time that I have barely started to write this and the grief, tears and overwhelming feelings take over.
I was very young during the Civil Rights Movement – it took my life from the early 1950’s until today.
As I go back to remember all of those years – from my teenaged years on – several of Dr. King’s words come flooding back. The strongest in my memory is the quote “You will be judged not by the color of your skin but by the content of your character.” During my darkest days that will pop up in my mind as I experience the racism, sexism and now ageism of even my closest friends and sometimes, my family.
On Wednesday, August 28 at 3pm, the time and date of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, houses of worship across the country will ring their bells in honor of the anniversary and will play hymns and spirituals. It should be an awesome moment! I want to be standing outside where I can hear all of them!
To contrast that to what was happening in the 1950’s and 1960’s is a stretch very few of us can make. People were being beaten, killed, maimed and the young were being denied freedom and equality. What young people had equal access to were the dogs, the hoses, the hostile and vicious law enforcement people who then worked hand and glove with the Ku Klux Klan.
Opportunities which these United States gave in its written documents were taken away at birth in the actual living out of life if you were the wrong race and sex. There has been no giving back. In fact, we still practice and allow others to practice the denial of the experiences of racism and sexism and we still strongly support the right of those engaging in such denial to be able to continue it. The denial that was so prevalent at the time is still hanging on with much tenacity and with no sign of the structure which accepts and promotes that denial being taken down. It is one thing to suffer the indignities and pain of racism and sexism; it is quite another to suffer those indignities and have those perpetrating them stand in front of you and deny their actions. —it has to do with the content of their character.
So many groups will be leading marches in Washington, D. C. from the Lincoln Memorial to the Martin Luther King Memorial. Around the country other groups will be leading marches to other places in their cities, towns, villages which have meaning in the context of this Movement.
Where will you be? What will you be doing? How will you contribute to the possibility that on August 29th you have helped to bring about some change which will make this a country more receptive to seeing everyone as equal?
The Bettina Network, inc. does its part – as a corporation – small though we may be – to help bring about moving us from a world of individuals, maybe even families, tribes, neighborhoods who see ourselves as better than those others out there – to a group of people who have an ethical commitment to dismantling the racism even further; to eliminating the sexism; to addressing the ageism and to reducing our thoughts about the culture within which we were raised away from a culture that is greater than, better than, more important than, to a culture which is different from but equal to all others. From that stance we are about giving, sharing, taking care of others as well as ourselves, and treating even the lowest and most tread upon of our brothers and sisters as equals and with respect.
The other quote from Dr. King which I hear often is “We must all learn to live together as brothers (and sisters) or we will all perish together as fools.”
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