Reflections on Martin Luther King Jr. Day
“I want to watch again the film we watched in school today.” My grandson comes home from his fourth grade day excited and subdued. Here in Boulder, Colorado, he is lucky to see the Rocky Mountains from his playground. Today, his class watched a film about Martin Luther King, Jr. since they will have the day off on Monday in celebration of King's birthday. Our grandson is intent on seeing it again and searches Youtube until he finds it. After supper, we watch it together. He seems focused on trying to understand the story and what happened. I take a step back in time.
In fourth grade, I spent one year in Goshen. Our family came from Belgium on a sabbatical year: my American parents returned to their American lives, we children followed. I felt in limbo, like a fish out of water, like a tourist in my own home. New culture, new language, new friends, new house. I learned to navigate this new land by listening and watching and soaking it all in. Still a child, I absorbed the tensions I felt around me about the Vietnam War, about civil rights, about being human in a topsy turvy world. Back in Belgium, our family had watched film about the 1963 March on Washington and, as a small child, I was gripped by Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, the huge peaceful assembly of people of all colors, and the underlying sadness and pain of an oppressed people in our supposed land of plenty. I soon learned that under our one indivisible nation, there was not liberty and justice for all. And so when I was expected to recite the pledge of allegiance in my American fourth grade classroom, I declined. My young mind rebelled at the idea that people of a different skin color than mine could be treated as an underclass. After all, weren’t we all humans just trying to make our way through life? Shouldn’t we all have the same freedoms?
Mrs. Roth, my fourth grade teacher, wasn’t impressed. I had to stay in at recess and write an essay. I no longer remember what happened after that but I clearly remember the night that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I was watching television in our Goshen home basement when the announcement popped up on the screen. I watched the black and white images stream and instantly knew that my childhood world had changed. As I saw Dr. King fall on that balcony, I felt the pain in my heart.
Later in that fourth grade year, a bullet also felled Robert Kennedy, riots and fires filled the streets of many cities, and at Christmas, I watched my father cry as soldiers and civilians died in Vietnam. Though only nine or ten years old, I understood pain, injustice, anger. But my young mind could not fathom how humans can treat each other so badly. And frankly, my adult mind can’t either.
These fifty years later, sitting with my grandson watching that old footage, I still cling to the hope that the joys of life can be for all, that liberty and justice will flow, and that every day I will do my part to create a world where love can thrive. Won’t you join me?
