I remember walking home from school when I was about 10 or 11 years old and I walked in the front door of our Front Street home (orange shag carpet and all). Mom was sitting in a chair pulled right up to the front of the black and white tv which was in a beige box with upholstery fabric on the bottom in a chris-cross pattern, quite the "modern" television.
She was crying her eyes out.
I ran to her and asked her what was the matter and she could barely get the words out. She was watching the assassination of Martin Luther King. I sat down on the floor in front of her and she told me who he was, in child terms. "He was a good man trying to do good things for the world and he stood up for what he believed in (mom was very big on that) and because of that, some bad person had killed him."
I asked all sorts of questions, what were the good things and why would somebody shoot him?
This was my first lesson in inequality I believe. It was the first time I can remember being exposed to prejudice. I remember feeling in awe of my mother, thinking of how she wanted everything to always be fair. Now as a mother of four, I get the fairness part, but at the time was realizing that the world was a much bigger place and fairness had to exist outside our home as well. I was amazed that she had this real emotion for someone who was on "tv", and I understood that this was "real", not just a tv show. (Remember I am old, and tv was still very new to us.)
Every Martin Luther King day, I think of that time with her and the lessons she taught me, and not only on that one day. (photo courtesy of www.clipartguide.com)
Janet Harvey
January 19, 2009, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
She was crying her eyes out.
I ran to her and asked her what was the matter and she could barely get the words out. She was watching the assassination of Martin Luther King. I sat down on the floor in front of her and she told me who he was, in child terms. "He was a good man trying to do good things for the world and he stood up for what he believed in (mom was very big on that) and because of that, some bad person had killed him."
I asked all sorts of questions, what were the good things and why would somebody shoot him?
This was my first lesson in inequality I believe. It was the first time I can remember being exposed to prejudice. I remember feeling in awe of my mother, thinking of how she wanted everything to always be fair. Now as a mother of four, I get the fairness part, but at the time was realizing that the world was a much bigger place and fairness had to exist outside our home as well. I was amazed that she had this real emotion for someone who was on "tv", and I understood that this was "real", not just a tv show. (Remember I am old, and tv was still very new to us.)
Every Martin Luther King day, I think of that time with her and the lessons she taught me, and not only on that one day. (photo courtesy of www.clipartguide.com)
Janet Harvey
January 19, 2009, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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