Martin Luther King Day

As a college student of the 60”s, this national holiday will always be significant to me. I remember the deaths of President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Reverend King, the “students” at Kent State University, the students attempting to register blacks in the south, and the little black girls killed in a bomb blast in the church where they were attending Sunday school (Sunday school for Gods sake – Little Girls!!!). I remember how completely “powerless” I felt, how angry I felt, and how overwhelmingly sad and hopeless I felt. I remember how embarrassed for our country I was. I remember students marching through the classroom within which I was teaching accounting as a graduate assistant at Arizona State University and how upset with myself I was because I did not dismiss class and march with them. But I thought I had “responsibilities” and was afraid to face the authorities as college students across the nation were doing that fateful day. You see, the events of that decade affected us all. We had to “face up” to thoughts, beliefs and social customs with which we were uncomfortable and which, deep down, we knew to be wrong. As a child of rural Montana I was totally confused. These young people were confronting authority ~ authority that was supposed to be leading us and demonstrating to us the difference between right and wrong. I was taught to respect my elders, i.e. authority. Yet I vividly remember attending a doctoral consortium in Lexington Kentucky where, for the first time, I encountered racial segregation directly in the downtown area of that city. Signs indicated that blacks were to walk on a particular side of the street, signs above water fountains stated “not for black use,” signs in cafe windows stated “no blacks”. Many signs used the word nigger in place of the word black. I knew it was not right! But for some reason I felt powerless to act. In my childhood all the wrongs that I witnessed of a social nature were on the TV screen – something isolated from me – something that I did not have to confront directly. Lexington was different. I knew that I could no longer do that. I could not ignore the wrongs. I was an adult. I was accountable for my actions. I was changed, not in outward ways. I didn't participate in protest marches (not many anyway - and certainly not enough). But, the way I raised my daughters and the way in which I conducted my life were changed. I don't believe my basic beliefs and moral compass really changed that much. But I was much more willing to speak out when I thought the actions and words of others were inappropriate. I was a stronger professor in and out of the classroom. Students knew not to cross the line. Collegues knew not to cross the line with inappropriate jokes, comments or actions. This period of my life's experience gave me the strength to act on my convictions. It is a part of me - of my character - and I am proud.

So...I will be "glued" to the TV set tomorrow, all day, as we watch Barack Obama's swearing in ceremony and all the activities surrounding it. As "we" used to say, "we've come a long way, baby"! I am proud.