Some Thoughts on a 40th Anniversary

I was 5 years old in Bethlehem Community Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on April 4, 1968.

We were "Bethlehem," the labeling by the United Methodist Church for day care services on our side of town. "Wesleyan" was reserved for West Winston-Salem.

Yes. We were segregated, and our lives reflected it visibly. Now, as I travel home, the signs are down, we no longer just go to the "Ritz" Movie Theater and anyone can ride on any part of the Metro they desire. East Winston is still segregated, de facto versus legal writ now. Economics, opportunity, education and globalization are the new fences, the new overseers. Bethlehem and Wesleyan are still community centers serving a new generation of the same constituents albeit interspersed with Hispanics now.

I remember April 3, 1968 sitting next to my dad as Dr. King preached a sermon. I asked him what he means by "I've been to the mountain top?" I, my teacher, my parents, my neighbors and that kindergarten class were soon to find out in the cruelest fashion.

We found out in that kindergarten class that life can be cruel, that flawed heroes can fall. We found out you can cry tears until your eyes burn and your gut hurts. We found out that our teachers hurt just as much as we did. We heard horns honking and saw rebel flags flying outside and later on the news: as we cried in agony, many celebrated our loss. I'm told by Vietnam veterans the scene was similar in country to the stress and detriment of soldiers of color. We graduated from kindergarten into a world without our Dr. King.

I appreciate the impact Martin Luther King had on our lives in that we understood our loss: usually at that age (as I recall), loss is not so personal even within the family unless it is a close, involved relative. He was like the uncle we’d never met and knew somehow his importance in our collective plight. We played, as kids are apt to after the midmorning nap. That was the only thing we could think to do.

Today, we are his legacy. And what we do with that legacy will be an interesting test of the democratic experiment known as America. Those that denigrate this commentary with simplistic, salacious epithets do not have the vocabulary or the intelligence to see their worldview other than that of a pie that is being subdivided to their disadvantage, that their culture and privilege somehow is threatened. Nothing could be further from the truth: no one registers culture, nationality or political party at the gas pump, in the supermarket, when your company has downsized you for cheaper labor overseas. We are all America.

John Donne said it best "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”