I had come to Memphis for a lie. That’s the cleanest way I know to say it. A lie wrapped in a good suit, tucked into a borrowed smile, paid for with cash I didn’t tell my wife about. The Lorraine Hotel sat warm and familiar under the April sun, its turquoise doors open like it was welcoming family instead of secrets. I signed the register with my real name anyway. Habit, I guess. Or guilt.
She was supposed to arrive later that afternoon. We’d planned it carelessly, like people do when they don’t believe the world can interrupt them. I stood outside my room on the second floor, leaning on the railing, listening to laughter drift up from the courtyard. Someone had a radio playing Sam Cooke low. Somewhere a man joked about barbecue. Life, ordinary and stubborn, kept moving.
Then Dr. King stepped out onto the balcony.
You could feel it when he appeared, like the air shifted to make room for him. I’d seen him once before, years earlier, from about half a block away, his voice rolling over us like thunder you trusted. Seeing him now, so close I could count the lines at the corner of his eyes, I felt suddenly exposed. Like he could look at me and know exactly why I was there.
He laughed at something someone said behind him. That’s the part that stays with me, the ease of it. The way his shoulders loosened. A man unguarded for half a second.
The sound that followed didn’t belong to the day. It cracked the air open. At first, my mind refused it. Firecracker. Car backfiring. Anything but what my body already knew. I saw him jerk, saw hands reach, heard shouting rip through the courtyard. Someone screamed his name, stretched it long and broken like it could pull him back.
I remember gripping the railing so hard my palms burned. Remember thinking, absurdly, this can’t be happening while I’m here for this reason. As if the world owed me better timing.
Chaos took over fast. Doors flew open. Feet pounded stairs. Sirens rose in the distance like a wail from the city’s chest. I backed into my room, heart hammering, and stared at the bed that had been waiting for sin. It looked small and stupid now.
I didn’t pack. I didn’t wait for her. I walked out of the Lorraine with my head down, moving against the crowd, against history unfolding in real time. I felt like a coward slipping away while something sacred bled out behind me.
That night I walked until my legs gave out. Memphis burned in places: anger, grief, disbelief spilling into the streets. I found myself sitting on a church stoop I didn’t recognize, listening to an old woman pray out loud for a man she’d never met and loved like kin.
That’s when it hit me: all my careful distance, all my excuses about bills and fear and “not being that kind of man,” and history had still dragged me into the room. I’d been close enough to hear the sound that changed everything, but not close enough to have earned it.
Dr. King talked about the mountaintop. About seeing the Promised Land even if he didn’t reach it. Sitting there in the dark, I realized I’d been living in the valley on purpose: ducking, hiding, telling myself survival was enough. It wasn’t.
I went home the next morning and told my wife the truth: not all the details, but enough. Enough to start over. I quit my job within a month and took work where the pay was thin and the days were long. I marched. I registered voters. I stood between angry men and frightened children and learned what real fear felt like, and what it meant to walk anyway.
Sometimes I think about that balcony. About how close I was to a moment that split the country open. I went to Memphis chasing something small and selfish, and I left carrying a weight I never set down. But it’s a good weight. A necessary one.
I didn’t get to choose the day I woke up. I only got to choose what I did after. And for the first time in my life, I chose to stand where I could be seen.
Good afternoon world! Usually I would hope this blog finds you in good health and even better spirits, but I’m pretty sure you can tell by the title that I’m looking to upset somebody. So why waste the time and energy hoping you’re happy if I plan on trying my hardest to change that? But enough about the introduction, let’s get right into why we’re here today…
This all started as a innocuous Facebook post, as most things do nowadays. The conversation was originally about Donald Sterling’s ignorant ass comments regarding Magic Johnson. If you aren’t familiar with the dumb shit that ignorant bastard let come out his mouth, check out the link..
As the conversation on Facebook continued, one individual blamed Magic and other celebrities for not doing more to uplift and rebuild the black community. His stance was that they owed it to us as their adoring public to lead us back to the right path, as black leaders had done in the past. Anybody that knows me knows this did nothing but incite me. I hate, no wait DESPISE, the idea that the black race needs a single leader out front to show us the way. Other races don’t have an appointed or assumed leader, why do we need one? Admittedly, there was a period in time when we needed someone to speak for us as a whole. But that time has since come to an end. And frankly, we’ll never see two gentlemen come along like those in the picture below.
Now, I’m not here to try and make it sound like there aren’t problems in the black community. I would be as naive as the previously mentioned gentleman if I believed that. But we can’t look to one person or a group of people to fix the problems that we face. It’s up to us to do that. And until each and every black person in this country realizes that it is their responsibility, no it’s their duty, to make sure they do their part to improve their surrounding conditions, we’ll never see any progress.
I think the problem is that we want to see grand scale changes made in our neighborhoods. There’s nothing wrong with that, but even the smallest contribution helps. We have to start somewhere. And the best place to start is at home. We have to teach our children how to be respectable members of society. We have to teach our sons how to be gentlemen. We have to teach our daughters how to be ladies. I understand that’s not going to automatically undo all the crap that our elders endured in this country over the last 400+ years, but its a place to start.
I’m not saying we don’t have to affect wholesale changes in our communities in order to get them to where they should be. We need businesses (especially black-owned businesses) to invest in our neighborhoods to revitalize them. But we can’t expect any business owner to honestly open up a location in our neighborhoods if they look like war zones. That’s where the residents come in. We have to take pride in where we live if we want entrepreneurs and CEOs to see our communities as being viable options for their businesses.
But the change has to start from within. We can’t affect or expect change if we’re doing the same things. I’m gonna get off of my soapbox for now. So until next time, peace and love…
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: “For Whites Only.” We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
In My Own Words... 