This is me, not a reprinted article. - OlderMusicGeekEver since I started, I've always felt guilty after Dr Martin Luther King Jr Day rolls around.
I feel like I should say something, but I don't know what to say that hasn't already been said better.
The problem is I feel I owe him - AND all the others like him - who fought to make black people more accepted and welcomed into American society. Admittedly, they still aren't as accepted as they should be, but it's a lot farther than it was in the '50's.
I'm a white - or European-American. So
MLK's and his fellow civil rights fighters' legacy doesn't affect me as much as others.
But it does - and did - affect me in some profound ways. One, because I was married to a black woman for 11 years. And two, because my daughter is obviously a mixed race child.
(My ex's and
my break up did not have to do with our races - we were just a mismatched couple.)
But because of people like
MLK, my ex and I lived a pretty normal life. No crosses on our lawns. Most neighbors readily accepting us and finding us and our daughter a perfectly normal addition to the neighborhood.
I remember talking with a bus driver, an older lady, whose uncle married a black woman who he met in the army. They apparently went out a lot in uniform, because people seemed to accept a white male soldier taking a black female soldier out and about, but not a white male civilian going out with a black female civilian.
And everybody always seems to love our daughter. (Apparently where we've failed as a couple, we've succeeded as parents!) They tell us how our daughter is such a good child and good influence. I don't think that many white folks would say that about a mixed race child in the '50's - at least, not an outgoing and talkative black child.
And my daughter is readily accepted by the kids, mostly white, at her school. And she was readily put in the gifted and talented program. - I have to wonder if they would have done that in the '50's, or even the '60's and '70's.
And because of people like
MLK, my daughter can be angry at
Obama and Hillary for running for president, because she wanted to be the first black president and the first female president! Because of people like
MLK, my daughter can dream of being president some day. (She has since decided that she doesn't want to be president - too much responsibility.)
And I guess that pretty much is why I feel I should write about
MLK and his like. Because he's helped me out when I was married to a black and made the life of my daughter a lot easier than it could have been.
So wherever you are,
MLK, thanks!
Vincent Jacobs, now 80, battled racism as a rodeo rider in the 1950s
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