Martin Luther King Day

I was a cute young thing in the early 60’s! My family and I were living in Silver Spring Maryland. My father was working at Walter Reed Hospital. I don’t think any of us will ever quite know all that it was that my father did for work there at Walter Reed or where all the traveling took him around the world. (this is why we so wish he would take some time and write his personal history. His grandkids would gobble up each and every word he would write- hint, hint) One of his official job titles there was- Research Psychologist for the Department of Experimental Psychology. He didn’t spend his time in the army hospital, but in labs elsewhere on base. But what we saw at his workplace was always very fascinating and exciting. The labs were full of monkeys and dogs and rats. There was a lab that had a strange room covered entirely with 6 inch foam cones. Walls, ceilings, and floor engulfed in foam-surreal to be sure. He had a way of conveying real excitement about what was being learned there and that amazing things were taking place in these labs. New discoveries and advancements in medicine and in modern technologies were being made there. I remember visiting there fairly often as a kid, and my reminiscing today, has to do with a drive into his work for one of those frequent visits.

(I need to say on the onset, that I don’t personally remember the following incident. But I do know and remember several occasions as I was growing up, of my folks relaying this story to others. ) So, cute little me is sitting in the car with my mom as we drive to dads' workplace. As we are driving down a busy street, I peer from the window and spot someone I believed to be my dad. “Look mommy, that looks -like my daddy standing there!” Mom glances sideways and then stares again, because I have just pointed out a gentleman wearing a military uniform like my father, who is tall and lanky like my father, and who was also wearing the same type of glasses as he did. But, there was a very apparent difference- this gentleman was Black! Not just an ordinary black man, but one of the stately, Kenyan, dark as night, BLACK man!
(hardly could be confused for a black man,ya think?!!)

The point I wanted to make with this anecdote is to say how grateful I am that I was raised to not see the color of people. Remember, this is cute little me, growing up in the early 60’s- at the height of the Civil Rights movement. At a time and place that must have seemed to be the epicenter of the battle- 10 minutes from the White House!! My parents were very involved in this movement. Mom remembers when Tina and Larry Johnson moved in across the way at the Holman Ave Apartments where we were living. They were the first black people to do this. Mom and a neighbor were the first ones to go over and welcome them to the neighborhood!! Soon they were fast friends and have been for years and years. I know that the careful teaching about the equality of people was something that came natural to my parents. It didn’t happen overnight. It wasn’t taught because it was PC. From the moment we were fetus’s in the womb-- ‘equality for all’, was instilled in our hearts. My parents are my heroes! Never have I seen my folks differentiate somebody by their color. Never!!
I have tried to do the same with my own kids. I don’t know that I have been nearly as successful. I will blame a great deal of the fault in that we haven’t lived in places where there was or is much diversity. I regret this at times. I am proud of my kids,they are people who I believe can look at an individual for who they are and not at what color their skin may be.

Bless Martin Luther King, and his rallying call for the equal treatment of all mankind. Thank heavens for all the parents and teachers that also do their best to teach these precepts to their children; one child at a time. This is yet another battle that could and can and should be won behind the walls of each of our own homes.