I was too young on April 4 1968, to remember when the world lost Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to an assassin’s bullet while he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
But a few years later I was old enough to recognize, even as a second grader, what an impact Dr. King had on the world.
I won my first writing award for penning an essay on Dr. King while I was in second grade, a few years after his death.
And while the essay is lost to a lifetime of memories, I still have, and cherish, the certificate from Margaret Park Elementary School in Akron.
And as my life has marched on, the special relationship I developed with Dr. King has grown.
I’ve read about his life and have grown to appreciate the equality for all he strove for.
As a 21-year-old police officer, I found out my sister was going to have twins.
Why is this important? Because my nieces are bi-racial.
I’m not sure how much America would have evolved from the overtly racist ideas of the 60s to now without Dr. King and the thousands who marched with him in Selma and Montgomery.
My nieces, Shawnee and Chie, were born more than three months premature.
I do know that if not for Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement he led, my nieces might not have had the same treatment as other babies in the NICU.
I can imagine what could have happened to the twin’s dad for impregnating a white girl.
Not up north? Maybe. Maybe not.
America is still not far from those times when hate-filled hangs lynched black men and forced those with skin other than white, to drink from “coloreds only” water fountains.
While the bastion of America’s racism was south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the tentacles of hatred spread throughout the north even decades after all men were supposed to be free.
I know.
As a police officer, I saw it firsthand, but I don’t want to elaborate on that right now.
It’s scary to think what America could have been without the “I have a Dream” speech during the 1963 March on Washington.
Maybe I would not have been able to be seen in public holding two bi-racial babies on my shoulder even though I was a police officer.
My mom, who spent hours praying and sitting with the twins in the NICU, may have been attacked verbally or physically, as she walked two bi-racial children in a double baby carriage or later as their chubby little legs pedaled tricycles on a city sidewalk.
Perhaps I would not have been able to sing a song my nieces learned in elementary school; “Dr. King was a civil rights leader… Dr. King… Dr. King… he had a dream.”
Life could have been different if not for Dr. King and the peaceful movement which took America by storm and scared some so much that it cost the husband and father of four his life.
A lot has been written about Dr. King since his death – both good and bad.
But I don’t look at Dr. King as a religious leader or moral compass. That was up to my church leaders and parents.
I do admire Dr. King for what he did for all Americans in trying to bring racial and economic equality.
I never saw a live speech delivered by Dr. King, walked a mile with him along an Alabama highway, or held hands while singing “We Shall Overcome.” But that’s not going to stop me from celebrating what would have been his 94th birthday.
Each time I’m with my nieces or their children, it is a candle lit on Dr. King’s birthday cake.
And each time I see my sister and her husband in public it’s a celebration of those who blazed the trail to civil rights.
Happy 94 Dr. King. America still has miles to go before she sleeps.
The words of Dr. King’s “I have a Dream” speech “…we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing,”Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last…” are so close…but so far away.
We all need to work to make the dream come alive.
A smile, a nod, or a kind word to someone different are small steps toward Dr. King’s dream.
And remember that enough small steps add up to a long journey.
Thank you Dr. King and happy birthday.
