I was 8 yrs old when Dr Martin Luther King gave his immortal, ” I Have A Dream” speech. As life for blacks went in the early sixties, I had a pretty good childhood. My mother was stay at home mom and my father was a Sargent in the Army. We lived on base in a 3 bedroom home and I attended an integrated elementary school. As best as I can remember, that day was no different from any other. I came home from school, grab some munchies and headed out the door to play. My dad was a baker, so there was always boxes of cookies, cakes and pies ready to be gobbled down by hungry young boys after a hard day of school. The next week at school was when I first learned of Mr King. We would get a children’s magazine, called the “Weekly Reader, ” and it was that reader that first taught me I was different from my classmates. The feeling lasted about an hour, you know how kids are, but as I grew into manhood, I often wondered about the struggles of people of my race that I had no clue even existed until my latter teenage years. As I grew I began to understand and sometimes to my bedevilment I would play a character most certainly known to my black brothers and sisters, but still very elusive to me. Entering manhood, I began to feel the full weight and crushing emotional toll of racism, from subtleties like locking the door when I passed a car with whites in it, or crossing to the other side of the street when they saw me, even being called a “nigg*r” straight to my face. Finally understanding Dr Martin Luther King, “I Have A Dream.”
This post is a reprint fom Hill1News February 15, 2018
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