Today is the 50 year anniversary of Martin Luther King’s riveting speech. I was not there that day, but I was living in Mississippi and working in a place where discrimination and segregation were peeling slowly away. Today, I’d like to reflect on the achievements of the past 50 years.
Segregation and discrimination are no longer the law of the land. Jim Crow has descended into a footnote of history. Fifty years ago, while riding a bus from work to home, I sat at the front of the bus opposite a fashionably-dressed woman of color. Despite a harangue from the bus driver, she retained her seat and he eventually took us both to our homes. That was a beginning. Today, even the lecture would be seen as outrageous. Nevertheless, there is in this day substantial segregation in neighborhoods. Just a few days ago I was counseled not to go into a part of town because, “the further you go in that direction, the ‘darker’ it gets."
Poverty and unemployment still hound the citizens of color in this country. It is getting harder and harder to move from the lowest levels of income to the highest ones. Instead of slavery, we have the bondage of higher rates of incarceration than anywhere else in the world. Is one worse than the other? However, more and more poor and underprivileged individuals are getting more and more education. Education of blacks and poor is improving at every grade.
And, the black community is more at peace with itself and those around them. There is no hint of the riots of the late 1960’s to send shivers of fear throughout the land. The bitterness seems to have been quelled. Blacks and whites sit together in coffee shops, libraries, buses and boardrooms peacefully and without any thought of irregularity. We have come very, very far in fifty years. I hope we can continue going as far in the next fifty.
Segregation and discrimination are no longer the law of the land. Jim Crow has descended into a footnote of history. Fifty years ago, while riding a bus from work to home, I sat at the front of the bus opposite a fashionably-dressed woman of color. Despite a harangue from the bus driver, she retained her seat and he eventually took us both to our homes. That was a beginning. Today, even the lecture would be seen as outrageous. Nevertheless, there is in this day substantial segregation in neighborhoods. Just a few days ago I was counseled not to go into a part of town because, “the further you go in that direction, the ‘darker’ it gets."
Poverty and unemployment still hound the citizens of color in this country. It is getting harder and harder to move from the lowest levels of income to the highest ones. Instead of slavery, we have the bondage of higher rates of incarceration than anywhere else in the world. Is one worse than the other? However, more and more poor and underprivileged individuals are getting more and more education. Education of blacks and poor is improving at every grade.
And, the black community is more at peace with itself and those around them. There is no hint of the riots of the late 1960’s to send shivers of fear throughout the land. The bitterness seems to have been quelled. Blacks and whites sit together in coffee shops, libraries, buses and boardrooms peacefully and without any thought of irregularity. We have come very, very far in fifty years. I hope we can continue going as far in the next fifty.
