Yesterday - January 20. 2009 -- was, for me, tomorrow. The tomorrow I've waited for, for at least 8 years. No, for much longer -- for more like sixty years. My childhood memories of racism and segregation go back at least that far, my tangled, tortured, treasured trunkfuls of memories. Snapshots, really.
Snap: I'm with Eula Mae and she's ironing my clothes and singing. She drinks water from the special glass we keep for her in our cupboard.
Snap: I'm with my father as he snatches my doll away from a 5 year old black girl. She and I, oblivious to skin tone differences, had been happily playing together while he sold toys to her mother.
Snap: My father patiently explains why we don't allow "colored folks" to go to the same schools, the same churches, the same retaurants. "It's simple," he says. "There's chocolate ice cream and there's vanilla. They're separate. That's all."
Snap: My friend and I are sitting at the back of a New Orleans bus in solidarity with the bus boycotts. As we get up to leave, the white people who stand rather than sit in the back (the black people have filled the front seats, although it's still technically illegal) throw glares of hatred at us. One man spits at me. His spittle mingles with my own tears: tears of defiance, tears of fright, tears of injustice.
And yesterday: let justice roll down like waters keeps humming through my heart.
And I cry again as I sing with Aretha: "My country 'tis of thee...." MY country has finally done the right thing.
Snap: I'm with Eula Mae and she's ironing my clothes and singing. She drinks water from the special glass we keep for her in our cupboard.
Snap: I'm with my father as he snatches my doll away from a 5 year old black girl. She and I, oblivious to skin tone differences, had been happily playing together while he sold toys to her mother.
Snap: My father patiently explains why we don't allow "colored folks" to go to the same schools, the same churches, the same retaurants. "It's simple," he says. "There's chocolate ice cream and there's vanilla. They're separate. That's all."
Snap: My friend and I are sitting at the back of a New Orleans bus in solidarity with the bus boycotts. As we get up to leave, the white people who stand rather than sit in the back (the black people have filled the front seats, although it's still technically illegal) throw glares of hatred at us. One man spits at me. His spittle mingles with my own tears: tears of defiance, tears of fright, tears of injustice.
And yesterday: let justice roll down like waters keeps humming through my heart.
And I cry again as I sing with Aretha: "My country 'tis of thee...." MY country has finally done the right thing.
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