This Day In History

Today is a doubly historic day that if it was written as fiction fifty years ago it would have been seen as a bizarre and extremely improbable story.  Today is the Martin Luther King Holiday and the inauguration to the second term of an African -American President. Even thirty years ago a federal holiday commemorating Martin Luther King didn't exist and it wasn't a certainty that it would come to pass.

It was November 1983 that Ronald Reagan signed the bill that was in Congress for four years. Reagan's signature wasn't entirely voluntary but the holiday had the support of a veto proof majority in Congress and was backed by a petition signed by over six million Americans. The first Martin Luther King Day was observed on January 20th 1986.  

Arch conservatives Jesse Helms and John Porter East, both Senators from North Carolina, lead the opposition against the bill. Not all states recognized  the holiday immediately and it wasn't until 1991 that all fifty states, some of them grudgingly, gave the day off to state employees.  One huge irony is the state Mississippi still combines Martin Luther King day with the state holiday celebrating the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee; Virginia also had combined the two holidays but separated them in 2000.  

Martin Luther King's life story can not be understate though some still try and ignore its significance. His civil rights movement help over-turn a century of Jim Crow laws and institutional racial oppression. It was done without violence, it was done by courageous people who put themselves in harm's way to move the principals of universal freedom forward.  Dr. King had been roundly criticized for his associations with communists and far left activists but I think it is also telling inditement on how the rest of the country turned a blind eye to the plight of four or five generations of people freed by the 13th Amendment. Conservative politicians had a chance to support racial equality but choose not to.

On this day I am thinking of a friend back in New Jersey. Chuck is an exception person, devoted family man, musician and works in post-op recovery at Children's Hospital (not an easy job). One time in idle conversation we started to talk about culture. The idea if there really was such a thing as a black or white culture in America today. So much of whatever is thought of as either white or black is so intertwined with the other and the only people that care about the divisions are the same people that want to keep the illusion of separation.       

Chuck and I compared all the different aspects of our lives. We shared the same values, we had very similar lives  and at least on paper if you looked at our education, net worth and lifestyle choices -we had far more in common than not. But then Chuck told me this story. Chuck would be first to say he's lived a "blessed" life. He's always had good job, never any problems with the law and no personal experiences with overt racism except once.

When Chuck and his wife were first married they took a trip to visit his family in Western Pennsylvania. On the drive back home they stopped at roadside restaurant for a couple of sandwiches and coffees to go.  When they unwrapped their meals they found the sandwiches were made mostly of rotting garbage.  Chuck isn't the kind of person to take something like that to heart but he did had admit that all these years later it still bother him.  There were many times afterwards where he wasn't sure about people's motives  -if he should be on guard or could safely relax. Racism is insidious because it was always there even when you're pretty sure, though not a 100% positive, it's not there. I feel America has come a long way in my lifetime but it maybe another generation before we can take it for granted racism is gone. 

I remember reading one of the essays in The World Of Mathematics by James R. Newman. It's a four volume collection and I can't remember the title essay or if the example I'm going to bring up is only part of one essay  but it was a statistical study on perceived racial prejudice. It took the example of one white and one black professor. Each taught a class of thirty students. Blacks students where 12.5 % of the college population and the other 87.5 % where white. 10 % of both student populations were openly racist. After all the math was done there was a 50/50 chance that any class the black professor had would have one openly racist student in it.  As the white professor had only a one in six chance of facing the same problem.  Even though the problem of racism was the same percentage in both populations, the perceived incidence of racism was  different for the two professors because of the raw number of students.

Still these are historic times and society has moved forward. It's unimaginable the KKK will ever have mass marches through Washington DC like they did in the first decade of the 20th century. Dr. King spoke of the day when a person is judged by the content of their soul and not the color of their skin.  I guess on the inverse sentiment of that thought, if we need to dislike each other it should be based solely personal animosity -nothing more and nothing less.  If you don't know somebody personally, then you have no right to hate them. Maybe that's enough until we take the next step towards the "more perfect union" first envisioned in the Constitution.

This is our history. It has it dark moments in contrast to it's all its brilliance. One of the great strengths of America is that we don't let history hang as millstone around our necks. But it's also one of our weakness, where we forget important lessons or remember the national narrative in a mumbled muddled mess.

Let's remember the past and keep in mind that we control the future by what we do now. We can be building a better future this very moment.

On a day like today I would like to also mention Henry Blair. He was an inventor and most inventors are heroic figures to me. What made Henry Blair even more special was that he's the first African-American inventor granted a patent in 1836. A time when it was illegal in many states to teach slave or even freemen of color how to read and write.