"Emmett Till & Medgar Evers"

"Emmitt Till & Medgar Evers: Civil Rights Memorial Center, Montgomery, Alabama" (c) 2010 Stu Jenks

I am an old woman named after my mother.
My old man is another child that's grown old.
If dreams were lightning and thunder was desire,
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago.

Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery.
Make me a poster of an old rodeo.
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to.
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go.
- John Prine.

    John Prine plays in my head as I find a place to park. Grab the Canon and look for the entrance. On the way to the Center, I pass the Memorial: an inverted cone of black marble with the names of forty people who died in the struggle for racial equality between 1954 and 1968. I touch the water as it flows across the smooth surface. I see the names of Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmitt Till and Medgar Evers. I think of taking some pictures, but decide to shoot them on my way back to the car.
    I enter the Center and pay my two dollar admission. My long lens catches the guard’s eye.
    “That’s some camera you got there,” he says with a big grin on his face.
    “Yes, it is,” I reply, smiling back.
    The guard and I hit it off and we talk about my camera, about football, and about the weather for a while. I then walk through the metal detector at the entrance of the museum. Metal detector?
    “I guess some of my white brethren don’t take too kindly to this memorial,” I say, trying to be witty.
    The smile falls from the guard’s face.
    “Some folk fire-bombed the first Center,” he says.
    I stop smiling too. I say my goodbyes, grab my camera from the x-ray tray, and walk inside.
    The Center’s main display chronicles the history of the Civil Rights Movement from Brown v. Board of Education to when King was assassinated. I see many names I recognize from my childhood: Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, George Wallace, The Freedom Riders, and many bronze plaques for those who were killed: Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Martin and others.
    I think of my family: a father who would often accuse me of spending money ‘like a nigger on a Saturday night”; a mother who tended to treat everyone she knew as her slave and servant, for her family had both, and a sister who has developed a great distaste for The Brown People who live near her, who have immigrated from South Of The Border. How in God’s name did I escape becoming a bigot, being a white middle-class boy born in Richmond, Virginia and primarily growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina?
    Then I remember that one summer afternoon.
    We were visiting Dad’s parents in Richmond. We had recently moved to Upstate New York. I think I was seven. It was 1961. They were repaving Monument Avenue which was just up the street from my grandparents’ house. I was bored and I went to investigate. Back then, asphalt machines moved very slowly as they applied the new pavement, with a dump truck that would refill the hopper of the giant paver, every so often. I was fascinated by the whole process. And I made friends with the four men who ran the paving machine. They showed me how it worked. They protected me from the hot asphalt. They told me jokes and I laughed. They really listened to what I had to say. In all the many visits to my grandparents in Richmond over the years, that one afternoon with those four men was my happiest time, hands down. And all four of the men were black.
    I leave the display room at the Center and enter a large darkened room. A floor-to-ceiling video wall glows with multi-colored names of people I do not know. Their names float in a black background for a while and then disappear, replaced by other names. I wonder what this is? I read a small display. Seems this is “The Wall of Tolerance.” Says I can add my name to the many, if I feel committed to working for justice, equality and human rights in my daily life. I cry as I type in my name. Then suddenly, the name ‘Stu Jenks’ appears large and bright on the black wall. I quickly photograph my name. I bring down my camera from my eye. I then see my name shrink to a smaller size, change color, and mix with the other names on the wall. Names fade out. Others fade in. Finally, my name disappears altogether, replaced by the name of a woman I do not know.
    We are never truly alone as we struggle, but we often think so. Even if we can’t feel them, we still invisibly hold the hands of those who are also fighting The Good Fight and who also know that the only God is Love. And it isn’t hard to feel some of that connection, once we begin to throw away the egotistical fears and prejudices that block us from each other. I firmly believe our souls and brains are hard-wired to feel love, faith, equality and compassion. We don’t have to build these abilities. They are already there. They are universal, intrinsic, God-given. We just have to bring down the walls that block us from the Light and get out of our own way. And that’s where the real work begins. It’s a daily practice for me, to not judge, for example, the powerful in my country who only pretend to care for their fellows. It’s no easy task to find the common divine thread with everybody, loved ones and jerks alike. I guess if it were easy, there would be no need for a Civil Rights Memorial Center, would there?
    Seeing these dozen of strangers’ names glowing on this video wall makes it clear to me, once again, that we are one people, one race, one planet. Always have been. Always will be. And anything else they tell us, or I tell myself, that contradicts this? Well, it’s a lie, either yelled by others or whispered to myself.
   

Comments

[Lecia J. Brooks]

Dear Mr. Jenks,
Thank you for writing about your experience at the Civil Rights Memorial Center. I, of course, think it is a very special place. Sounds like you really felt the power of it, too.
The names of those who took the pledge and added their names to the Wall of Tolerance randomly appear every 4-5 days. Now Stu Jenks will appear as the name of another person, unknown to the next visitor, who is committed to work for justice everyday.
Thank you.
Lecia J. Brooks
Director, Civil Rights Memorial Center

[MoralHeroes]

Thanks for this article, it is a great tribute to great men. I hope someday to see this memorial.

Medgar Evers was recently featured as Hero of the Week over at MoralHeroes.org

http://moralheroes.org/medgarevers

[Stu Jenks]

Thanks. I'll check out your website Moral Heroes. Peace, Stu

[Elizabeth]

Thanks, Stu.

My mom, who grew up with racist attitudes, told me that when I was three years old, we were at the St Croix River beach, and I saw my first Black person, another three year old. We gazed at each other in wonder for several minutes, then took each other's hand and toddled off to play. Mom and the other little girl's mother both smiled.

I went to an excellent high school, where we had few kids of other races, but those were good students and socially accepted and very popular. Our senior social study teacher invited a Black kid from a school in an area that had racial problems to speak to our class. The kid said something about how we had a kid of another race right in the class. We all looked around in confusion. He pointed out Tony Chu. "Oh", someone said, echoing my thoughts, "No, that's Tony." Tony was just another student like the rest of us.

My first encounter with racial problems came when I was a student at the Univ of Mn. I was on the stairs of the student center, rummaging around in my bag to see if I had enough money to take a bus home, or would have to hitchhike. A couple of Black kids came down past me and said something I didn't catch at first. I just smiled at them. After they passed on, what they said filtered in,"Whitey countin' all her money." I was shocked and hurt. They didn't know anything about me! Yet they felt entitled to slam me. All the assumptions we make.