I Wish You Were Here By Bob Herbert

Be sure to read my note at the bottom, relating today to Gaza...Connie

January 20, 2009 Op-Ed Columnist

I Wish You Were Here

By BOB HERBERT And so it has happened, this very strange convergence. The holiday celebrating the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became, in the midnight hour, the day that America inaugurates its first black president.

It’s a day on which smiles will give way to tears and then return quickly to smiles again, a day of celebration and reflection.

Dr. King would have been 80 years old now. He came to national prominence not trying to elect an African-American president, but just trying to get us past the depraved practice of blacks being forced to endure the humiliation of standing up and giving their seat on a bus to a white person, some man or woman or child.

Get up, girl. Get up, boy.

Dr. King was just 26 at the time, a national treasure in a stylish, broad-brimmed hat. He was only 39 when he was killed, eight years younger than Mr. Obama is now.

There are so many, like Dr. King, who I wish could have stayed around to see this day. Some were famous. Most were not.

I remember talking several years ago with James Farmer, one of the big four civil rights leaders of the mid-20th century. (The others were Dr. King, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young.) Farmer enraged authorities in Plaquemine, La., in 1963 by organizing demonstrations demanding that blacks be allowed to vote. Tired of this affront, a mob of state troopers began hunting Farmer door to door.

The southern night trembled once again with the cries of abused blacks. As Farmer described it: “I was meant to die that night. They were kicking open doors, beating up blacks in the streets, interrogating them with electric cattle prods.”

A funeral director saved Farmer by having him “play dead” in the back of a hearse, which carried him along back roads and out of town.

Farmer died in 1999. Imagine if he could somehow be seated in a place of honor at the inauguration alongside Dr. King and Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Young. Imagine the stories and the mutual teasing and the laughter, and the deep emotion that would accompany their attempts to rise above their collective disbelief at the astonishing changes they did so much to bring about.

And then imagine a tall white man being ushered into their presence, and the warm smiles of recognition from the big four — and probably tears — for someone who has been shamefully neglected by his nation and his party, Lyndon Johnson.

Johnson’s contributions to the betterment of American life were nothing short of monumental. For blacks, he opened the door to the American mainstream with a herculean effort that resulted in the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He followed up that bit of mastery with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“Once the black man’s voice could be translated into ballots,” Johnson would say, “many other breakthroughs would follow.”

Without Lyndon Johnson, Barack Obama and so many others would have traveled a much more circumscribed path.

I wish Johnson could be there, his commitment to civil rights so publicly vindicated, his eyes no doubt misting as the oath of office is administered.

It’s so easy, now that the moronic face of racism is so seldom openly displayed, to forget how far we’ve really come. When Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, it was illegal, just a stone’s throw away in Virginia, for whites and blacks to marry. Illegal! Just as it is illegal now for gays to marry.

Less than a month after the speech, members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church in Birmingham, Ala., where children had gathered for a prayer service. Four girls were killed. Three were 14 years old, and one was 11.

My sister, Sandy, and I, growing up in Montclair, N.J., a suburb of New York City, were protected from the harshest rays of racism by a family that would let nothing, least of all some crazy notion of genetic superiority, soil our view of the world or ourselves.

My grandparents, who struggled through the Depression and World War II, and my parents, who worked tirelessly to give Sandy and me a wonderful upbringing in the postwar decades, seemed always to have believed that all good things were possible.

Even if the doors of opportunity were closed, they didn’t believe they were locked. Hard work, in their eyes, was always the key.

Still, the idea of a black president of the United States never came up. Perhaps even for them that was too much to imagine. I wish they could have stayed around long enough to see it.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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Magnificent work here as always, by Mr. Herbert, in his style, content & always a little something new he is teaching most of us...

Quick note : I've been reflecting a lot yesterday and today on the four little girls in this history which Bob writes about above:

..."Less than a month after the speech, members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed a black church in Birmingham, Ala., where children had gathered for a prayer service. Four girls were killed. Three were 14 years old, and one was 11."

And at the same time that I reflect with grief and gratitude for a beatiful day of hope and glad tears here in America, I can't get the picture of so many dead babies out of my mind who've died by bombs made in the USA!

I can't stop thinking about the hundreds of little children bombed in Gaza and their dead, dying or grief stricken parents -- all being destroyed in our day, THIS DAY when we are celebrating the end of a brutal eight years.

What about the way our leaders have turned a deaf ear and a blind eye? What about the way the US government has condoned way too long the forcing of so many to live in what is called often the world's largest prison?

What about the gospel adhered to by even the most rights-oriented legislators we have in our government where the gospel foreign policy for that land has been "Israel can do no wrong...?"

Israel where Arab peoples have been considered 2nd class citizens and called names like animals and forced out of their homes and made to live in densely populated places?

How sad yet without justification that such a wounded people --the Jews, those barely surviving the holocaust before there is any chance of recovery would be forced to brutalize at the point of a gun, those whose homes they desperately needed...But what about the new victims, then and the growing victims day by day...seething with anger and desperation with each now bomb and depravation?

Even today, we only need to put ourselves just a wee bit in the shoes of each of the key players -- then...and now especially the parents with each their innocent children -- Even now, what would we be likely to do in the major instinct most of us would have -- to protect our own? in Palestine, in Southern Israel. Do we recognize how little do any of us know what we'd do were we in the same predicament?

And yet, we may not have many more chances to turn this around--

Those of us in the US right now, we MUST get to the hearts of our legislators and other officials to help transform their hearts so hardened to the terrible plight of those in GAZA and to help transform this terrible blight of blindness to the plight of others which has so diseased so much of the human race!

We must get to the heart of our President Barack Obama and Rahm Emmanuel ASAP!

Surely we all know by now there's ethnic cleansing going on in our name, in the name of the USA who just put into office someone who symbolizes a way of living for all and states a strong abhorrence to anything like what's happening in Gaza?

We are way too connected to Israel/Palestine not to see this...our own decency, our own well-being is hugely at stake...

And voice of human decency alone surely is shouting by now, if we are listenig to so many the world over, "How can you in America celebrate the climax and victory of human & civil rights today in the victory of Obama over Bush mentality -- when US-made weaponry lay all over Gaza mixed and spattered with blood and where ethnic cleansing featuring civilians- largely children is the planned and chosen name of the game?"

Thanx for tuning in,
Connie

Verse 1 One child is simply not one child
The seeds of our future lie in our children

One child is simply not one child
The seeds of our future lie in our children

Verse 2 One life is simply not one life
One life affects our friends and family society

One life is simply not one life
One life affects our friends and family society

Verse 3 One song is simply not one song
One song lights the light of hopefulness

One song is simply not one song
One song lights the light of hopefulness

Verse 4 One heart is simply not one heart
One heart connects to all humanity

One heart is simply not one heart
One heart connects to all humanity

Verse 5 One dream is simply not one dream
One dream paves the way to tomorrow

One dream is simply not one dream
One dream paves the way to tomorrow
Finale One, One, One, One
One child, one life, one song, one heart, one dream
One, One, One, One

(From New Songs for Peace)

Meantime, happy dreams and many prayers, President Obama and Your lovely Bride