My March On Washington

Sixty years ago I was in the summer of my junior year at Morgan State College, Baltimore, Maryland, a southern city below the Mason-Dixon Line, and my home town, the only White boy in a student body of 2,600 Blacks. Many people over the years have told me I should write about it, but I've never been able to because, actually, it all seemed so normal. Coeds dressed in pillbox hats (a la Jackie Kennedy), wore white kid gloves, and carried purses. Sport coats, ties, and briefcases were prominent among the guys. Football, social life, fraternity and sorority activity, and grades were the things most cared about. Black Power was barely an intellectual concept. Stokely and H. Rap would not be center stage until my senior year. Nobody was radicalized, yet, but most of us were in the process of being so. Brave students had sat in at a lunch counter in North Carolina. Rosa Parks had refused to stand up. Civil Rights was brewing but not yet boiling. I didn't consider myself a radical -- I still don't -- but I was no longer able to ignore the criminal injustice of racial relations in my country. I had to be on that march, not just because my life at Morgan would have been untenable if I did not, but because I knew the time had come for me to participate. As the Baptist preacher declared, "I been called."

When the day of the march arrived, Morgan students caravaned by the chartered bus load  from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., although I did not go with them. That morning I dressed in a grey, light weight summer suit, white button down shirt, cordovan wingtips, and thin rep tie, and took a Greyhound bus from Baltimore to D.C. by myself. I was determined to be on that March, but I didn't want to be hidden within a contingent of other students. I wanted to be seen. It was time for me to do my part, and this would be it. So I walked alone. 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 kept distance between the groups in front and back of me so I would be obvious. I wanted to stand up and stand out as a well-dressed white man who could no longer ignore the cruelty of racism. I remember feeling naked and exposed - scared a little, really. It was sweltering - August in D.C. - but I kept my tie neatly around my neck and my suit jacket buttoned with the cuffs of my shirt remaining a proper single inch beyond the jacket sleeve, and still I wondered, foolishly, naively, if this was what it felt like to be stark naked facing a pack of snarling dogs? 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. Martin had declared his dream. I felt like I was part of a grand army. I felt so proud. I wasn't alone anymore. 

I rode back to campus with the rest of the Morgan students. We disembarked and, before going our separate ways, formed a circle with our arms around each others shoulders,  closed our eyes, and swayed and sang, "We shall overcome..." It was a different time. 

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.

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.

Why I Don't Have A Cell Phone

I don't wear a watch or carry a cell phone. I wear a wedding band on my left hand and my Bar Mitzvah ring on my right, but that's all. I want my hands free. If I want to know the time I'll look at the clock or ask someone. If I want to know the weather I'll look outside. A cell phone is not some magic trinket bringing true love and order to my life. If I never had to talk on the phone that'd be just dandy with me but especially do I not want to answer the phone while I'm crouched down hunting for kosher salt in the supermarket, for example, or anything else for that matter. I'm sorry. I'm doing something. But the phone's ringing! So? I'm doing something. Where is it written that when someone calls, one must answer regardless of what one is in the middle of, or not in the middle of, or in the middle of absolutely nothing at all (which is where I can often be found).

I don't think I'm a Luddite.  On the other hand, I don't think necessity is the mother of invention, either. Invention - we're still on the other hand - is the mother of necessity. To wit: the FAX machine. Did we need it until we had it? Where is it now? Was it even in our wildest dreams - the ability to get your deli's menu on a print-out? And the web? Fuggedaboudit! Who even knew? Who even guessed what a greedy part of our ecosystem it's become? 

Everybody I know's always looking for their phone, always leaving it somewhere, or dropping it. And they're all upset about it. Where's my phone? OMG! Oops. And when they've got it, "Gotta jet. Runnin' out of juice." Do I really need to honor something that brought the butt dial to prominence? I'm no different from anybody else. If I had it I'd be losing and looking at it, too, and, yet, there are so many more wonderful things to see off-screen. What we're talking here is freedom. The freedom not to. Kris Kristoferson wrote and Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose". The fewer machines tying me to them the better. Maybe I am a Luddite.

Happy 43rd

It's said we don't meet the people we love, we recognize them. Come August 12th we'll have been married forty three years. My goal is fifty. Beyond that? Forty five years ago we didn't know each other - but came that instant later - a door opened, literally - we connected and that was fade in with a smash cut. Her smile was bright as the lighthouse at Alexandria where mirrors captured the sun. They reflected its rays and aimed them back at enemy ships until they burned and sank. Well, that night, around 8pm, when that door opened and that lighthouse cut loose, my ship burned and sank. But, J was a pretty good swimmer and has kept me afloat ever since then. Mazel tov, Toots. I love you truly. And good luck.