Black History Month

 The neighborhoods where we lived when I was a child were all mixed in that there were always all kinds and colors of people. I took for granted that the whole world was the same. That we were all just people trying to get along. As I grew, I became aware of the imagined differences between us. And I came to know there were those in denial about strife between black and white, and then there were others hell bent on making sure people always “knew their proper place.” 

 Still others were determined to stand up to hate and injustice. As a child I was given a book of Black Americans of history. I learned about Crispus Attacks, the first American to die in the Revolution, Fredrick Douglas, Althea Gibson, Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson, Paul Robson, Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, the list went on, I wish I still had that book today. You may notice many names missing. Shirley Chisholm, Muhammad Ali, James Earl Jones and so many more were all writing history as I read.

 I vividly remember Mrs. Agnes Butts who lived across the street from us when were kids. She looked after my sister and me often. In 1968, she took us to the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade down 5th Avenue, the one, and only time I have ever been to that particular New York City event. It was a long trip from Mariners Harbor on Staten Island to mid-town Manhattan. My sister and I were so little, we sat on the curb, and I got dizzy watching the endless stream of marching legs! I remember the solitary figure of then  Mayor John Lindsey. He looked about ten feet tall.

When Bobby Kennedy strode by bigger than life surrounded by a throng of photographers and reporters, Mrs. Butts nearly burst over the blue police barricades shouting in that unmistakable and totally endearing Staten Island accent “Baw-beee! WE L-UH-V YOU!”  I will never forget the excitement in her voice and the general buzz of the crowd as this comparatively small man walked by. 

In April of that year, the iconic Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr would fall to an assassin’s bullet. By the end of June, RFK would also be gone.

 As a child I watched the Civil Rights Movement unfold on the nightly news and all around me. I came to recognize that there was nothing more heroic in life than the struggle by an oppressed group of people for basic human decency. Whenever we are fighting for their rights, we are fighting for our own as well.

 

Black History Matters. Black Lives Matter. Always.

Peace.