Melvin and Joanna: Reflection

Today, I had a wonderful and insightful discussion with two people who were past an impressionable age the day Martin Luther King died a martyr's death while on a trip to Memphis, TN to support the striking black sanitation workers of that city. One of the people I spoke with was my mother Joanna, and the other is a man whom I've known and lived with from the age of 10 until I headed off to college, known simply as Melvin. We had a good conversation about what it was like for them in those days of protests, racism, and violence.

Melvin is a tall, dark skinned "handsome" 60 + year old man who grew up on over 100 acres of farm land in East Texas. I call him handsome because he has more muscular arms and faster legs than I do and I'm 27, and I'm sure he was able to pick up any woman who would lend him an ear back in his day...I think the mustache probably had something to do with it too. His hands are dark, large, and rough from the decades of farm work and blue collar labor he has done all of his life...he dropped out of school in the 10th grade to help out on the family farm...dawn until dusk, 6 days a week. His hair is always neatly groomed into itty bitty shiny curls that didn't turn salt and peppery until he was around 58...remarkable. Over a cold beer, he first tells me about how much he loved James Brown back in those days. He used to grab his beat up church shoes, spit shine them, have his sister trim his hair, and head out the door in the latest polyester fashions of the 60's. He tells me he can't even count how many times he's seen the Godfather of Soul. They used to get "high" (Old school East Texan for drunk) off of whatever they could sneak in and dance the night away with all the pretty young brown skinned girls who are now the grandmothers of today's youth. James Brown lit up the stage every night, leaving all the young men trying, in vain, to emulate those smooth dance moves all the way home. Every time he went out, though, he had to watch out for his friends because they were a little wilder than he was. Sometimes, they'd dare to stumble too close to the other side of the theater....the white side. White people loved James Brown too. They entered through the front of the theater, while blacks had to enter through the side or the back of the building. Too many times, Melvin saw the consequences of a young black man intermingling on the white side. His vocal inflection sounded as if this was just a regular story about the past, but his eyes revealed a deeply sowed pain and frustration about this time of his life...as close to "almost teary eyed" as a man of his stature will ever get. He then changes the subject to reminiscing about the times he ate in the kitchen of restaurants because he was not allowed to eat in the main dining area. The color of his skin, the origins of his race of Kings and Queens, rerouted him through the back door, past the rotting trash and the used grease barrels. This was his experience throughout his entire childhood and well into his adulthood. He shook his head and joked about the fact that most of the time, the cooks and dishwashers were old black women, and he had to sit in the kitchen to eat....how many free meals do you think were secretly handed out as sort of an...instant retribution? He belted out a rough laugh and said, "Boy, those white boys were losing their ass on me when I ate in the kitchen!".

Melvin was driving a truck for Schepps in Dallas the day Martin Luther King died, something he may not have been able to do had it not been for non-violent protest. He made it a point to mention his disgust with some of the black youth of today..."pants halfway off their ass and gold and shit in their mouths, they don't realize the sacrifices made for them to be able to go to a school they get kicked out of"...a commentary on what he sees everyday now, over 30 years after Martin Luther King died. Melvin has children and Grandchildren and has worked for the same trucking company for over 30 years, winning several awards, helping countless friends and family, and finally got that Jaguar last spring he'd wanted since he started driving.

Joanna is 54 years old and hails from a quiet little bayou town in Louisiana called Parks, right next to Beaux Bridge..."The Crawfish Capital of the World". As a child, she picked cotton and pecans, and fed livestock to help out her father who worked in a smoke filled sugar cane refinery, and her mother, who worked various factory jobs while her father was off to WWII, before she was born. She is small in stature, about 5'2", and has small, seamstress hands, once again, revealing a laborious upbringing. Her skin is slightly lighter than coffee with two of those little cups of cream, with a reddish tint that reveals her Native American mixing. Her hair is as straight as Pocahontas with a little gray underneath the "used to be" gray she gets touched up every other month or so. Most black people call it "good" hair, but I call it just another texture of hair. Why is short and kinky not considered good, it's our natural hair type isn't it?...but that's another short story all together. She told me about a trip that her Mom and her two other siblings made yearly, to see our "light skinned creole" cousins in another little bayou town named Houston. They traveled via bus, in the back of course, on a trip that lasted about 7 to 8 hours. She explained one trip in particular in which she was a little girl, I'm guessing 10 or so. Some call it the pee pee dance, Mothers call it a "I hope I don't have to deal with pissy underwear" moment, and the bus driver called it, "time to pull over...quickly". When the bus halted next to an old South East Texas Diner, Joanna and her mother scurried off the bus to the front door of the diner, only to find a tall, menacing, good 'ol boy blocking the entrance. He would not allow them, a mother and her 10 year old daughter, come in and relieve themselves. They only had one type of bathroom and that shitty little South East Texas toilet was deemed fit enough, only for asses of , as Melvin describes white people sometimes....our European brothers. The only conclusion was to make that 10 year old little girl, Joanna, and her mother, Vivian, relieve themselves like the animals on their farm back home...outside in the dust, dirt, and rocks. By this time, Joanna was fired up, enunciating every syllable crisply and staring me deep into my soul in order to make sure I was paying attention to every beat of the story's cadence...as if she was expecting me to drift off into my Generation X-like short attention span gaze into TV land. But I was a metronome, keeping the rhythm of her testimony. She then told me about the sit ins and marches of her teenage years. How the Protecting and Serving Police used to show up with riot gear and growling Dobermans...governing through threat of coercion...the usual government's creed. Joanna then stopped and solemnly told me something that I never thought about all of those times I was laughing in class, or sleeping through lectures in college, or losing myself spending all of my time and energy trying to make unhappy women happy with me, or trying to existentially find my path Through Hemp-induced Chapters of my life. She told me that her high school wasn't desegregated until her junior year, 1968...Brown v. Brown was decided in 1954 and those stunning pictures of the National Guard escorting the Little Rock Nine into that White public school were snapped back in 1957. A full 11 years later, Louisiana finally decided to desegregate their public school system. Joanna said not much had changed at that time because they didn't start the aggressive busing program until after she graduated in the 1971. If you ever wonder why the roads in Louisiana are cracked and bumpy (until you get close to a Casino), or why so many of the wards and schools in New Orleans looked so dingy when the nation took a look at the Katrina Disaster, the reason is because Louisiana was the last state to desegregate, meaning that they passed on 11 years of millions and millions of dollars in federal block grant money for roads, highway, bridges, and public buildings...just so little white children didn't have to go to school with little black children like Joanna, who liked to play basketball with the boys and loved math. After her sentiments about how much she loved math as a child, Joanna joked and wittingly said "and now I look around and feel like this shit still don't add up", as she looked up and around her cookie cutter living room.

Joanna was 17 years old, a junior in high school, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died on April 4, 1968. She was marching before that day and continued to march afterward. Raising two black men with all the knowledge and wisdom she could afford while battling with diabetes. They did not have to endure anything close to what Joanna and Melvin did, although there was some racism. Her oldest gets out of jail this Wednesday, January 17 after serving a little over 6 months and will start his own march to salvation, he is strong. Her youngest just moved back home after a failed wedding engagement, to save money for a house, but secretly, he is just searching for a path and some inspiration.

My life is the reflection of Melvin and Joanna, it is my inherent responsibility to build on what they worked, scraped and fought for....and to throw the rope over the fence to help those behind me, because they will never be beneath me. At times I'm frustrated that I haven't reached my full potential in leadership and success (Dr. King got his masters at 28), but I'm grateful for the wisdom that brings me to that conclusion. I will continue marching. Thank you Dr. King. Thank you Melvin and Joanna.