Martin Luther King Day (to me)

I was raised in Boston, MA.

I am the 1st daughter and second child of 6 children.

My parents and grandparents were 1st and 2nd generation Irish Catholics practicing liberal democratic politics during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.

I attended freedom school during the boycott of the Boston Public School system in 1963 over segregation in the neighborhood schools.  Over 8,000 black children participated in this event.  I was one of very few white children in the church classrooms. The particular issues raised and dealt with at that time were lesser quality teaching materials, lack of any "Black History" for black students, lack of black teachers as role models in the community and crumbling classrooms. 

I took classes in Black History, was introduced to text books about formerly unknown black history makers and scholars and sang "We Shall Overcome" with the conviction of a young girl who had been forever touched.

In 1965 I marched alongside Martin Luther King and Reverend Ralph Abernathy to the Bostom Common in a Freedom March - linking arms and swinging my red scarf proudly.  I was 10 years old. 

My parents "bused" their children to schools in black neighborhoods.  I attended programs in all black neighborhoods and finished my high school education in Copley Sq at a program that originated in Dorchester, MA called the Model Demonstration Sub-System Senior HS.  At the time I was part of a 14-20% minority population of white students.

It was an incredible upbringing.  Did I feel that I "belonged"?  Yes I did, due to the nurturing that I received from the key black leaders in the programs that watched out for their "experimental" white students.  I had a thick skin, and recognized the sameness of the bigotry that I had seen in my white neighborhood as no different or more right than any bigotry that I experienced as a minority in the black community.

When I was about 12 yrs old I complained to my father that since I hadn't been alive during slavery in America, and that neither I or my family members had participated in the segregation of blacks, why did I or we have to pay the price in the world that we lived in?

My father very wisely and sternly explained that as long as I had a white face in a world where blacks continued to be segregated, where prejudice against blacks still prevailed then, I too, would bare the guilt and the shame of those before me.

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" (the Black National Anthem) I learned this anthem as a very young girl and sang with Martin Luther King proudly then and now as I live his legacy in my everyday life to bring equality to all regardless of race, color or creed.

Happy Birthday!