Celebrating Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

I spent most of the weekend glued to CNN coverage of the inauguration celebrations for President-Elect Barack Obama. How fitting that we inaugurate our first Black-American president so close to the anniversary of Dr Martin Luther Kings 80th birthday. I was three years old when Dr King was assassinated and do not remember his famous speech or his terrible death. However, I remember vividly the assassination of RFK and the riots that occurred in the late 60's. This weekend’s events have me thinking about my place in history and my connections (good and bad) to Dr. King and his legacy.

When I think about Dr King, civil rights and the south, I think about my mom. Mom is a quiet woman who thinks she is rather ordinary and who does not have much to say. I think Mom is wrong. Mom was born in a small town in Alabama in 1941, raised in the San Francisco Bay area, and moved to Utah as young married women in 1963. Oh my, the stories she has to share. Stories of being told to be nice to the “colored” girl but not to bring her home again. Stories of being told, when she explained my father was a Portuguese American, “an N-word is an N-word just the same". Stories of people speaking only to her as though my father could not understand. Countless stories….stories told in bits and pieces that almost unknowingly chronicle racism in American.

The story I find myself thinking about today is the one in which mom traveled from California to Alabama by bus in the late 1950’s. Her story about her trip and her first real experiences with segregation and racism are fascinating. Fascinating memories of being forced to ride in the “front” of the bus, seeing white only signs on restrooms and drinking fountains for the first time, the elderly black man quaking in fear when she moved to let him pass on the sidewalk and of him moving into the street and crossing to the other side to avoid the appearance of being disrespectful to the white teenagers...so many stories. I have to admit, they all seemed like works of fiction to me, as though mom was reading from a book not from her memory.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to experience some of my mom’s stories first hand. Two cousins and I accompanied our parents to Alabama for a funeral. During this visit we met many of our older relatives and listened in stunned silence as they told us about segregation, Governor Wallace, the bridge at Selma, and the 50’s and 60’s in Alabama. Our elders related all these stories as though we automatically understood their southern "white-folks" perspective. There we sat, the daughter of a Portuguese-American, wife of a Japanese citizen, and an openly gay young man listening to these incredible stories. In the evenings, we would return to our B&B and marvel that we even existed - thankful that our grandparents had stayed in the West after WWII. Ironically, we were sharing that B&B in that small Alabama town with a black family. This could not have happened in 1958 or maybe even 68 or 78. The whole experience was surreal.

I will admit, given my personal experiences, I told my husband months ago I did not trust the American people to vote for a black man. Sounds horrible to be so cynical but I only had my experience to go on. Tomorrow is a joyful day and hopefully a new beginning. I know we shouldn’t expect too much, I know Obama is just one man, I know we face huge challenges etc, etc but I am not going to care tomorrow. I am going to leave the cynicism at home and enjoy the celebration!