Forty-seven years ago. Wow, what a long time! I was twenty-two, a student at Morgan State back then, so, as Morgan was a Black college and I was the only white man in matriculation at the time, there was no way I could avoid the March on Washington and ever show my face on campus again. I had been a student at Morgan long enough to begin to grasp the cancer that was racism. Is racism. Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat. Courageous students in North Carolina sat in at a whites only lunch counter. I would be on that march. Period. I was determined to make a statement.
Morgan’s campus crackled with anticipation. Busses were hired to carry students to and from D.C. I don’t remember how I got there, but I don’t think I went on a bus from Morgan. Something tells me I went to the bus station downtown and took myself over on a Greyhound. I wore a suit and tie, polished cordovan wingtips, and a fresh haircut. I realized I did not want to be part of a contingent. It wasn’t, I don’t think, the ego’s fear of getting lost in the crowd but the inability to make a statement.because I’d be invisible, and, if I were invisible, what was the point?
I’d been cautioned by my mother in Baltimore not to get involved, however, as I’d been lying to her for most of my remembered life, anyway, I had no trouble assuring her not to worry. I had to go to work; I wouldn’t be there. Don’t worry, ma.
How I got from the D.C. bus station to the march I cannot remember, but I do remember being on the march itself: a nice, naive Jewish boy without a sign in an ivy league suit and button down shirt, all by his lonesome. I felt more exposed than any time before in my life. It was hot, but I kept my tie neatly around my neck and my suit jacket buttoned with the cuffs of my shirt a proper single inch beyond the jacket sleeve, and still I wondered if this was what it felt like to be stark naked facing a pack of snarling dogs? Not that I was. Not that they were. Not yet. That would come, but I have no memory of hecklers that day. I went with the crowd as it pushed towards the Lincoln Memorial and found myself in position to see Dr. King quite well while he gave his legendary speech: “I have a dream…” His words snatched those snarling dogs and shut them up quick. I heard the words clearly and knew I had just witnessed something extraordinary.
I don’t remember going back to Baltimore, but, that evening, my mother asked me how my day was in that way she had when she knew she’d nailed you. I said, “Fine.”
“Work was…?” she asked.
“Fine,” I answered.
“You lied to me,” she said, and I knew she knew, though she remained uncharacteristically composed.
“How’d you know?”
“Your cousin, Doris, called from San Diego. Her whole family spotted you today on tv.”
“Yeah?”
“Every network.”
“What’d they say?”
“They said you looked respectable.”
“I guess so,“ I said and wagged my tie.
“Where is this going to lead?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
I wasn’t lying. I really didn’t. I still don’t.
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