Civil Rights

Alas, I am a day late. Readers of my blog (do those exist?) would say that I am several weeks late. Given what I am about to discuss, the negative thinkers among us would call it a month late. I am choosing to say that one day into March and out of February (among other things, Black History Month for those of you who don't spend regular amounts of time in the public school system) I am a day late. Call it positivity, call it an attempt to lessen the stigma of procrastination, or just call it exasperating and tell me to get on with it.

I could write about many things in regard to black history and black culture. Some topics would be controversial; some would hopefully be insightful; some would probably just show my ignorance. But today, what caught my attention was a series of pictures and descriptions encircling a social studies classroom. The posters depicted the progression of the civil rights movement from the late 1800s
until the "assassination" of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. I would argue that there was probably more to say about the movement even after the death of Mr. King, but that's another issue.

The event that held my attention was the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962. In September of 1962, the Supreme Court ordered the university to admit its first black student, James Meredith. The color of this man's skin prompted 14 hours of rioting leaving two dead and nearly 200 injured as well as the deployment of 20,000 federal troops to restore order by Mr. Meredith's mere setting foot on campus. You can say what you will about the decline of society, but I am astounded that this barbaric event, among other similarly horrific ones, took place in this country only 43 years ago. I am amazed at the ludicrousy of such discrimination. In the early forties, America fought a war across the ocean in part to stop the outrageous persecution of the Jewish people. Twenty years later, a large portion of our population regarded one of our own citizens with the same Nazi-like disgust on our own soil. Twenty thousand troops and two dead. The president had to call for 20,000 troops to stop childish fighting over the presence of a man with darker skin pigment. What is equally amazing is how easy it is for us to find reasons to hate another person.

We learn about history not so that we can feel smart when we watch Jeopardy or play Trivial Pursuit, but so that we can learn from the mistakes of our predecessors. I confess that I don't know nearly enough about history. But I know that my generation, and today's children need to learn about the atrocities of the past. Prejudice still exists today, and in much more complicated terms than the color of one's skin. You might say we've become more "sophisticated" in our dislike and disdain of each other. We have to learn how to love each other, and to do that we have to move beyond ourselves and really see each other. Think about it.