Random Musings

I Never Believed in Heroes

Yesterday I took with me to the hairdresser my latest copy of the Times magazine. Today, I received the Newsweek, dated January 9. Both magazines carried articles about the late Dr. Martin Luther King.

The articles focused upon the latter years of Dr. King's life, specifically his last days, and how his efforts toward using non-violence to protest against injustice seemed to fail him in the end. The articles painted somewhat disturbing and discouraging images, incongruent with what history would have us to believe about Dr. King. Incongruent and discouraging if I hadn't already come to some conclusions about the man on my own.

I was a child of maybe eight or so when Dr. King died. I can clearly remember being with my mother at the Northland JC Penney in Southfield, MI trying to pick out an Easter dress. A saleswoman came up and whispered to my mother that Dr. King had just been shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.

My mother suddenly became very fearful and told me that she was ready to go home. She said that she was afraid that people were going to riot. I didn't know what a riot was, but I could tell from her face and by the grip she took of my hand that it was something terrible. We left off dress shopping and returned to the car. My mother never learned to drive, so Daddy had to be her chauffeur. He preferred to stay in the car and snooze than to go into the stores with us to shop. He was there in the lot, waiting for us to come out. She told him what happened, and then, in tense silence, we went straight home.

In my mind at the time, Dr. King was associated with trouble. His name conjured up for me the word "negro", places like Mississippi, Alabama, Selma, and the city where my grandfather lived, Montgomery. I knew that four little girls had been killed by a bomb while at church one Sunday, and that their deaths had something to do with Dr. King. I had seen television coverage of black people getting washed back and away with firehoses wielded by white firemen. I had seen the pictures of black men and women being attacked by dogs controlled by white policemen.

But my parents were gentle, private people. They believed in going to work every day, minding their own business, and keeping to themselves. They didn't talk to us or explain to us about the nature of the struggle. It wasn't something that was discussed at the Catholic school that I attended. Thus it all seemed abstract to me, very much removed from my cozy, insular life. It wasn't until much, much later that I really came to understand what Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement had been all about.

After college, I became an elementary school teacher in the inner city. As February had been designated "Black History Month", we were obligated to step up our efforts toward educating the children about the struggle of black people in America. We trumpeted the feats of those who fought so hard for the rights of ethnic minorities in the United States, particularly the famous blacks who had done so.

Although I in no way wanted to diminish the great sacrifices people made, the hardships they had to endure, and the strides we have made as a nation due to their unrelenting efforts, I grew tired of the same names always being dredged up: Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, etc. For those children who had come so many years later, those names were abstract. And what about the nameless others who were thrown in jail, hosed down, bitten by dogs, humiliated, spat upon and killed whose names didn't make it into the annals of history? What about the people who were with Dr. King, the little people who did the grunt work in the background so that he could become the icon he became?

And had some of those very people, the ones we remember, been in it not only for the struggle, but also for the fame and glory it brought them? In one of the articles I read, Dr. King's angry accusation of that very thing to one of his up and coming lieutenants confirmed that line of thought for me.

I have always felt that black history is American history, and as such, it should be taught as American History should be taught-candidly and exactly like it happened, not as an entity separate from other U.S. history. The events and the people and the pain should blend and fold and flow with all the other events and details that make up the rich tapestry of our American past.

In reading the two articles, I found Dr. King to be very, very human. A man with human frailties, fears, insecurities, and failings. He was a man with vision, an intellectual, a powerful speaker, a definite leader, but when you get right down to it; he was a man. Rosa Parks became a symbol of strength and dignity, but in reality, she was merely a tired black woman who on that day had had enough and would not be moved.

It is my belief that most heroes, those people history tends to deify, are simply people who were doers as opposed to talkers, people who were tired and fed up with a situation, or those who were in the right place at the right time and made the most of the moment. In the end, however, they were people- people like you and like me.

I can remember a few years back when the stories first started leaking out about Dr. King not being faithful to his wife during their marriage and how andgry and disappointed some people were about it. Some didn't want to believe it, claiming it to be vicious, racist propoganda designed to mar his image. It didn't mar his image to me. To my eye, Dr. King, aside from being a preacher, orator, and a leader, was a handsome, sexy, and charismatic individual. In my mind- like all males- preachers, erstwhile heroes, and otherwise; Dr.King was a man. The reality is, some men cheat on their wives, even men dedicated to a noble cause like the Civil Rights Movement.

I'm sure that Rosa Parks wasn't the first black woman who got tired, sat down on the front of the bus, and got arrested for refusing to get up. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglas weren't the only people who thought that slavery was wrong and decided to do something about it. But I'm sure that if we dig deeply enough into their pasts, we can find some dirt on them, too, that goes against the sterling image that history has bestowed upon them. We get in the most trouble- in church, in history, and in other key places- when we try to make people more than mere people.

To sum up, I don't believe in heroes, never have, but I do trust in the strength of character, the goodness, and the humanity of people.