On Dr. King's Birthday

Today is the day America celebrates Dr. King's birthday and his legacy. His actual birth-day was last Tuesday, January 15.

I was born in 1964 in Memphis, Tennessee. So, when the sanitation workers struck against the city in February of 1968 I was three and a half years old. My family routine was slightly disrupted when Dad had to drag our round metal garbage cans to the street so supervisors and scabs could remove our trash.

We lived several blocks from Memphis' largest African American neighborhood, Orange Mound. After Dr. King was killed on April 4 there were angry protests and small riots in that neighborhood. In the early morning, dad took us from our home to my grandmother's. Later there was a curfew and National Guard tanks and armored personnel carriers on the streets. I remember describing an APC as a train locomotive with its own tracks.

Memories of Memphis in the 1960s also include segregation in restaurants like KFC, where the black patrons ate on picnic tables in the back. The garbage strike was about dignity and adulthood. The phrase "I am a man" on sanitation workers' signs meant "don't call me a boy." All of this is chronicled far better than I can do here. Here is one such book.

I think we are much better off as Southerners thanks to Dr. King, the striking men who stood up for their adulthood, and others who supported them. Imagine the drag on our economy if blacks could work in fast food restaurants, but not eat in them. Segregation was a real anchor on our culture's race forward.

On your birthday, my hat is off to you, Dr. King, for your Christian non-violent work for positive change in America.