I was ten when I met Dr. King.
The Riverside Church, New York City
He'd come―firebombed, indicted, under siege, and undeterred―from the wars of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I’d come―bruised, bashful, and buoyed― from the battlefield of school desegregation.
That’s what brought us together. But, as I later learned, our paths first intersected at a crossroads staked two years earlier.
Monday morning, December 5, 1955
Rosa Parks goes to state court in Montgomery, Alabama; charged with violating racism’s rule by refusing to give up her seat to a White man on a city bus. At the very same hour, my immigrant grandmother, Myra Carlisle Landsmark, goes to federal court in New York City to become a citizen. Her charge is to pledge allegiance to a flag that promises her freedoms in theory, denied both women in fact. Such were the times, north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line; west of the Hudson and the Mississippi.
Mrs. Parks’ conviction under segregationist law (she was given a suspended sentence, fined $10 and ordered to pay $4 in court costs) and her own convictions (moral and ethical) ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott that catapulted its 26-year old strategist, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the pantheon of the global human rights struggle as orator, activist, and human rights champion; as pastor, preacher, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
With Grandma’s pledge, her American-born first generation daughters committed her only grandchildren―my cousin, Ted Landsmark, and me―to the Civil Rights movement.
The family’s vow was not unlike that made by Blacks a century before. In the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, young Black men enlisted in the Union Army to fight their “War for Freedom,” a war to free loved ones still enslaved, the Civil War. In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, the month after Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Landsmark had their day in court, Ted and I were two of the four children enlisted to liberate America’s schools still held captive to racism.
The Riverside Church
Such were the dreams and the legacies of our forebears. Such were the routes that led me to The Riverside Church and a receiving line where Dr. King greeted me. A young 28-year-old father, desperate and determined to set things right for his baby daughter and unborn son, he reached out his hand to another child in need.
“And what are you doing for our people?” he asked (someone having, assuredly, primed him on who Ted and I were). We told him we were two of the four elementary schoolers who had desegregated New York City’s schools. He told us that what we were doing was “important.” He then lifted my awestruck chin and called me “pretty.”
Growing up a child of the Integration Generation in those days when “pretty” and “important” were about as good as a Negro girl could hope to feel, you could say I was “raised” by Dr. King.
The next day, as my mother brushed my hair for school, I saw a different me in the mirror. I was nine when White parents spat on me and clawed my clothes for trespassing what they saw as turf and entering what I saw as school. Now, touched by King, I felt cleansed; lifted. Yes, I was a child “raised” by Dr. King.
His words liberated me and made me feel what every man, woman, and child wants to feel: validated, respected, understood. His thoughtfulness made me think I could do what every person wants to do: live up to my own imagination.
The Deal
“Let’s make a bargain,” said Dr. King. “If you keep doing well in school; keep doing what you’re doing so other children won’t have to suffer what you have, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing so our people won’t have to suffer what they have.” We agreed, shaking hands on it.
That brief act of caring and generosity, that charge a young man gave a little girl, forever changed my life. A gift of spirit and possibility, I re-gift it to you today—what would have been his 101st birthday.
Thank you, Dr. King. Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Birthday Weekend to us all!
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Pictured above: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with his two youngest children. At the time of his death on April 4, 1968, he was 39; his children -- Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter, and Bernice -- were 12, 10, 7, and 5 years old respectively.