Days of Remembrance and Hope

Where you are makes such a difference in how you see things that happen, I'm learning. The back to back days celebrating Martin Luther King's birthday followed by the inauguration of Barak Obama as the first black president are days I think I see differently because of where I live.



About half of the houses on my street are owned by older black people who raised their families and lived out their careers in this neighborhood. They have lived through the decline of the neighborhood in the 80's and 90's when more and more of the neighborhood was taken over by drug dealers and gang members, suffering as poverty and crime affected everyone.



Each older neighbor I have met told me that they moved here in 1963. What does that mean? It means that as soon as one black family bought a house here, all of the white people sold their homes and fled to the white suburbs. The pastor of Paradise Missionary Baptist around the corner told me the building was sold to his congregation by a white church in 1965.



My neighbors have changed how I see this election and the new president. My neighbors lived in the Jim Crow south, being turned away from restaurants and the front of buses, drinking from separate water fountains and using a different entrance to the theater. My neighbors lived through the civil rights movement and encountered all of the resistance and recriminations of those who hated change. My neighbors have been teachers, pharmacists, firefighters, and housekeepers. They sent their children to college. My neighbors experienced continued oppression in neighborhoods that became neglected and blighted partially because they were primarily black.



Even if I can never fully know what it is like for my neighbors to watch the inauguration of President Obama, living here has given me a small taste of how momentous these days have been. It doesn't take the media hype for me to see the connection drawn from the dream of Martin Luther King as he spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to what the oath taken on the Capitol steps symbolized.