Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King
January 17, 2025
Carey Mason
Over the coming week, there will be multiple celebrations acknowledging Dr. Martin Luther King’s January 15th birthday. Dr. King’s life ended abruptly by assassination on April 4, 1968, a short 39 years later. I was a 14-year-old 8th grader living in Louisville, KY when Dr. King died. Walking home, I recall my excitement over the early dismissal from school, while not fully understanding the reason. Opening the front door of my home, my ears were assaulted by the sounds of my wailing Great Aunt Libby as she lamented Dr. King’s death. The unintelligible words in her high-pitched southern drawl hinted at the significance of Dr. King’s passing.
Aunt Libby was 62 when Dr. King died. Given her 4th grade education, race and gender, Aunt Libby suffered limited employment choices for most of her life. Through most of her career, Aunt Libby worked as a housekeeper and nursemaid taking care of white children, leaving her own family in the care of others. Aunt Libby was grateful for the income provided by her work. Coupled with her small widow’s pension, she was content and independent. Like many other black women of her age, “housework” was the only employment that she could obtain given her lack of education, gender, and her dark, ebony skin color.
Daily, Aunt Libby religiously read the Louisville Defender a locally published newspaper which focused on the lives of African Americans. She read about the sit-ins, non-violent demonstrations, litigations, and boycotts organized and led by Dr. King as they occurred in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Aunt Libby never marched in protest and never tried to sit at a “whites only” lunch counter. She rode quietly in the back of the bus hoping that her arrival in the white neighborhood of the children she cared for would go unnoticed. A lifetime of open discrimination because of her black skin color and female gender had made my gray-haired Aunt accepting and visibly compliant.
Aunt Libby never complained openly about her life, nor did she suffer in silence. She embraced her work with noticeable vigor and pride. Caring for white children gave her life meaning and purpose. She was respected, admired and yes, loved by the white families that employed her. Aunt Libby accepted her stature in life, never making enough money to own a home, a car or take vacations. And yet, she was far from bitter, in large measure because of the Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King.
Aunt Libby followed the Civil Rights Movement in earnest. She listened to or read every speech and sermon that Dr. King generated. Her modest apartment was home to a China plate emblazoned with Dr. King’s image that was impossible to miss as you walked through her front door and into the hallway. For Aunt Libby, the promise of the Civil Rights Movement was just that…a promise, for which she had no expectation of receiving any personal benefit. Instead, she looked to a promised future, in which her nieces, grandnieces and grandnephews would have the opportunities that were neither available nor offered to her.
The promise of the Civil Rights Movement never burned brighter for my aunt than they did on August 28th, 1963, when Dr. King delivered his “I have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. In his speech, Dr. King specifically addressed racial equity. And yet, for Aunt Libby and many like her, she wanted and supported total equity giving all the right to participate, prosper and reach their personal potential unchecked by race, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, or any other individual element that reflected who they were. She believed in gender and LGBTQ equity, although in the 1960s, those terms had only begun to surface. Aunt Libby was born in 1906, a short 43 years after the declaration of the Emancipation Proclamation. She was born forbidden to vote, attend a non-segregated school, live in a white neighborhood, or openly love whom she wanted.
Aunt Libby believed that with enough time and effort “total equity” could be enjoyed by all. She particularly enjoyed the passage in which Dr. King shared his dream “… 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”. Dr. King valued an individual’s character over their race, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or any other diverse perspective. Aunt Libby believed her descendants would eventually live in a world that reflected the dream she shared with Dr. King, making good on the promise offered by the Civil Rights Movement.
As we celebrate Dr. King’s 96th birthday, his burning vision of “equity for all” is under attack. Our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters have lost the federal protection to make decisions and personal choices about their reproductive rights. Government programs designed to support the development of minority and women owned businesses are being challenged based on claims of reverse discrimination. Corporate businesses are yielding to pressure from social activists resulting in the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that help under-represented and marginalized communities. In San Francisco, residents who lack permanent housing are once again being removed and moved “elsewhere and anywhere away from here” so they are no longer visible on the street. And most recently, the Supreme Court heard arguments that would allow Tennessee (and other states) to ban medically necessary gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
In honoring the legacy of Dr. King, we must take both individual and collective action to address the growing attacks on “equity for all”. We are a stronger community and by extension a stronger nation when we value the diverse perspectives of our entire community without regard for race, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, or other elements of diversity. Dr. King’s legacy should inspire all of us to act and not assume that someone else will act on our behalf. Find out what is happening locally in your community, in your state and nationally to combat the divisive social media rhetoric as well as the proposed laws that seek to protect the rights of one segment of the community to the detriment of another.Leverage your privilege and embrace Dr. King’s dream of total equity in 2025. Support an inclusive community that provides and protects “total equity” for all. Doing so will honor Dr. King’s legacy, fulfilling the promise made to Aunt Libby and others like her.