Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

I know this is not the most inspiring art for today. But it feels like we celebrate Dr. King and the Movement without remembering the reason why there needed to be a movement in the first place. Especially as Dr. King has become a national hero.

I feel like it is dangerous to assume we would've followed him.

What strikes me in looking at the images of the Jim Crow response to civil rights is the inexplicable RAGE over basic things like sharing public spaces with a person of different color. I understand all the history, but it still doesn't make sense. The brutality. The seething anger. Only monsters could be capable of such things.

Which leads me to another striking idea: they weren't monsters. They were normal men and women. Grandmothers. School teachers. Pastors. Barbers. Their children were there holding up signs alongside them.

Which is why I am so glad that we have progressed from this, right? Except when I research the signs being held up to uphold Jim Crow, I see many of the same phrases that are being tossed around today regarding equality + public schools + oppression. Sure, there are less n-words, but the messaging is eerily similar.

I think if I wish to teach my students and my children about Dr. King and the prophets of the movement, I have to keep these facts present. Just as the Israelites have to keep stories of worshiping golden calves in the narrative of their deliverance from Egypt, we have to keep our whole history in the narrative of the prophets who called us out of the darkness.