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IN ACTION
Just as I got ready to sit down and write something for
Valentine's about love, Coretta Scott King died. Reading about her
life, I was struck by the part about her growing up in the rural
South and as a girl picking 200 pounds of cotton on the weekend
so she wouldn't have to miss her music lessons after school. Then
there was the part about how after college she went on to Boston
to study music and met Martin Luther King, Jr., and after they
married and he graduated, she encouraged him to return to the
Sojth, to take the pastorate in Montgomery that positioned him
to be already in place to stand up and be counted when destiny
called him. Included in that account of their lives together was
the emphasis that growing up out of the cotton South as she
did. she wasn't just his helpmeet and handmaiden to his career.
Even though she mothered four children and was the wife of an
increasingly busy leader, the cause of human rights was her cause
as much as his, so that after he was slain, she naturally continued
to carry the mantle, in spile of the subsequent problems with the
King Center she founded in Atlanta.
Those names—Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King—
have already marbleized into history, like Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy. We say them and they sound
significant, but we can no longer say why. Dr. King was a Civil
Rights leader. Mrs. King was his widow. Why do we capitalize "Civil *
Rights.? anyway?
We tend to forget what "Civil Rights" means and what it meant
to Coretta Scott King growing up in rural Alabama back before
World War II and living in
Montgomery at the beginning
of the Civil Rights era.
It is difficult for any of us
today to go back and under
stand what it meant in 1955
when Ms. Rosa Parks decided
on the spur of the moment
that, no, she was just not go
ing to qet up one more time
and move to the back of that bus. At the time of her recent death,
I heard her voice on National Public Radio recounting that mo
ment, and she sounded so bright and unassuming and human, say
ing that she was in a hurry to get to work and surely wasn't look
ing for trouble, but that all of a sudden, she had just had enough.
We can't go back there and realize what that lone woman in that
segregated city risked by her action.
We know that when the African-American citizens of
Montgomery decided that they, too, had had enough, Dr. King
stepped forward and became their leader. We know he did so
with his wife sharing the burden and the danger. Their home was
bombed. He was arrested. She knew he could be killed. Their cause
prevailed there in Montgomery in the deep South in the 1950s, and
it made him a leader and pumped up the Civil Rights movement all
over the South. And there were many more marches, with Mrs. King
often by his side. We cannot, even looking at those old videotapes
and photographs, go back to those times and understand the fear
they felt and the loathing they elicited among the people their
cause challenged, people holding tightly to a way of life built on
the understanding that African-Americans were and should be sec
ond-class citizens, riding in the back of the Jus, attending inferior
schools, unabie to vote in our democratic elections, working the
menial jobs, usually without even the benefit of Social Security,
saying "Yes, Sir" and "No, Ma'am" to every white person they
encountered, no matter what their relative levels of stature and
attainment.
But to the extent that we can go back and try to understand
those times, we can catch a glimpse of why those college students
in Greensboro, NC, risked their lives by sitting down at a segre
gated lunch counter and refusing to move. We can catch a hint
of why so many African-Americans over the South were willing
to sit in and march and demand equahtv ®ven at the risk of being
beaten and murdered.
And they were beaten; and they wi^c muttered. And when you
see them, say, in Selma, preparing to march across the bridge in
the face of a violently angry mob of white people who set dogs
on them and police who beat them viciously, you can maybe see a
glimmer of why we capitalize the Civil Rights Movement and you
know why Dr. King spoke so often of death, because he and Mrs.
King and all their fellow marchers weren't just out on a lark; they
were looking into the eye of death because they believed they
were right and that the time had come to fight for the right and
not let anybody turn them around, back to the way things used to
be.
That's love in action, and it won't hurt us this Valentine's Day
to be reminded of the real thing and that the struggle for human
rights is just as important today as it was in 1955.
Pete McCommons Editor & Publisher edilor^ttagpole com I
We tend to forget what
"Civil Rights” means and
what it meant to Coretta
Scott King growing up in
rural Alabama...
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NEWS + CULTURE
LETTERS 4
CITY PAGES 5
ant 7
COMMENT 8
BOOK REVIEW 9
CIVIL WAR RE-ENACTOR 10
HIP MAMMA 13
THEATRE NOTES 17
MOVIE PICK 20
GRUB NOTES 21
ART NOTES 23
COMICS 38
REALITY CHECK 39
LISTINGS
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MOVIE DOPE 18
ABC 24
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REIGNING SOUNDS 31
FABULOUS BIRO 33
REDUX NATION 34
RECORD REVIEWS 35
BILLY JOEL'S LOVE SONGS 36
THREATS & PROMISES 37
* VOLUME 20
ISSUE NUMBER 5
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