Civil Rights Won & Lost

While we are busy living our lives, discussing the latest news, and going about our lives, history happens. It doesn’t seem like history at the time, it’s actually current events…the latest news. Years later, you begin to realize the impact current events had on your life, and at the moment it happened you remember what you were doing, where you lived, and so many other memories.

I remember watching the nightly news with my parents in the mid 1960s and as a child, it frightened me. Civil rights protest, marches, women burning bras, and men burning draft cards. The news covered people protesting the Vietnam War, African Americans protesting, and women protesting. Everyone seemed to be protesting something and my little child brain just could not understand what all the anger was about.

At home I would listen to my father (Army career officer) and mother (stay at home parent) discuss the importance of my mother establishing her own line of credit. It didn’t make sense to me but together they opened her own checking account and dad would put a portion of his income into this account for mom to establish her own bank account and then he encouraged her to apply for a credit card. At the time I didn’t realize it but women could not open credit cards without a male co-signer. My parents saw the need for my mother to be financial independent if my dad was killed during duty and worked together to make this happen regardless of the obstacles in front of them. Systematically, they worked together against the barriers designed to keep my mother dependent on a male to survive financially in this world in 1966.

In 1968 my dad was deployed to Vietnam for a tour. My mother was home with us kids. There were 4 of us, ranging in age from 9 months old to 15 years old. My older sister had died 2 years earlier after losing her battle with leukemia, she was 5 years old. My brother was born a year later. My oldest sister was 10 years older than me, then me, my younger sister was born 18 months later, and my brother was born 18 months after her. During the year my father was deployed, my mother taught her oldest child to drive, while potty training the youngest, and everything in between she handled.

In the spring, after my father deployed to Vietnam, there was a knock on our door. Our next door neighbor wanted to talk to mom in the front yard. They discussed something briefly and then suddenly my mom returned to the house to retrieve the keys to her VW that was parked out front. She ordered my older sister to get dad’s parachute and bring it to her immediately and sternly instructed us to stay in the house, gather our bedding, and to wait for her in the den until she came back in the house. With car keys in hand, parachute tucked under her arm, she locked the front door as she returned to the neighbor outside. We raced to the window to watch mom as she started up the car and noticed the neighbor had opened the double gate to the backyard. She drove the car into the backyard and we ran to the back of the house to watch her drive the little red VW bug into our large forsythia bush behind our house. Our neighbor helped her out of the car and out of this huge bush. Then together they took the Army green parachute and covered the car, arranged the limbs of this yellow blossoming bush and like magic, the red car disappeared. Our neighbor returned home and mom unlocked the front door, entered, and immediately locked it behind her. She closed all the drapes, turned off the lights, and ushered us into the den. There she watched the news, while we played. We slept together in the den that night. She turned it into a ‘camping trip.’ It was fun. I never thought too much about it until in 2010 when I began to ask questions regarding her driving that little car into the bushes and I was shocked at her reply.

It turns out that day was the day that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. My parents homebase was Memphis and the car had Tennessee plates on it. We lived in Camp Springs, Maryland which is located on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Upon the announcement of this great civil rights leaders murder, riots across the country erupted. Washington was being burned and as our neighbor had explained to mom, “the mobs are marching this way and if they see that car with those plates you will be lucky if your house is still standing.” There was a need to hide the car immediately or risk the wrath of a mob mentality. Mom informed me they kept the car hidden for a couple of months, she didn’t dare drive it for fear of retaliation. We walked if there was something we needed from the store but for the most part mom had us shelter in place, long before anyone ever spoke that phrase into existence.

As a child, I didn’t understand the news. It was people marching, fighting, boycotting places and services, and giving a lot of speeches that didn’t make much sense to me. Now as an adult, I realize the constraints minorities faced when I was a child. The community was stacked against theses minorities on a social and economical level. And these minorities made numerous attempts to dismantle these barriers and these fights spanned over decades. I am sadden as I remember how hard each of these rights were won and now with a stroke of a pen, being lost. The very idea of civil rights being taken away from any member of our society should scare every person in this country.

I realize the history I witnessed first hand is now being ignored, rewritten with a narrative that is not inclusive or accurate. In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed civil rights being won by groups such as African Americans, women, and LGBTQ+ minorities. The news reported the struggles, fights, protest, and deaths for these groups to gain basic human rights in this country. I never once thought I would witness any minority group lose their civil rights…until now. Minorities are being targeted in frighting numbers disguised as policies to protect Americans and make America great again. The LGBTQ+ community is being targeted with legislation introduced to erase transgender minorities into non-existence, proposing the reversal of the Respect for Marriage act, dismantling of DEI programs, and more.

Now is the time for our community to protect the most vulnerable members in our country as we transition into a time period of uncertainty for all minorities. Now is the time to stand up as an ally, raise your voice and be heard. Be clear in your communications regarding minorities civil rights to remain intact, call your elected officials. Let them know this is not acceptable. Shop locally owned minority businesses. Now is the time to stand up and say “No more.”