Posted on Monday, January 16, 2017

Discovering Atlanta Through the Eyes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Driver Tom Houck…A Repost…

(me and my hubby & Tom Houck and another tour goer)

Editor’s Note: I originally wrote this post in 2016, but in honor of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday today, I thought I would share it again. Enjoy 🙂

Hello World,

Last week my husband Robert and I were thinking about what we could do to celebrate the sixth anniversary of our first date yesterday. As I was listening to 1380AM WAOK on the way home from work on Wednesday, I realized I had a fun and educational option. Derrick Boazman host of “Too Much Truth” was interviewing Tom Houck whom I had never heard of before. Tom, a white man, was the driver of Dr. King and his family for several months. In a gruff, hearty voice likely emboldened because of the precious history he possesses, Tom described how being kicked out of high school in Jacksonville, Florida for merely participating in a Selma march in 1965 eventually led to being in the inner sanctum of the very leader of the Civil Rights Movement as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s driver.

In 1966, Tom’s civil rights activism brought him to Atlanta to work for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In one of those fortuitous moments that forever changes someone’s life, Dr. King saw Tom across the street from the SCLC where he had gone to make a call on the pay phone and invited the 19-year-old to have lunch with him and his family. That lunch led to him being asked to drive for the King Family. Tom describes his experiences as their driver as a part of his Civil Rights Tour, a bus tour in which Tom takes people to see the historic sites in Atlanta that provided the landscape of the capital of the Civil Rights Movement.

At the end of the conversation, Tom offered two tickets to the first person who e-mailed him the answer to this question: What was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s real first name. I was literally pulling into my driveway when I heard him ask the question. I parked, unlocked my front door and ran to my computer, hurriedly e-mailing him the answer: Michael. For the first five years of Dr. King’s life, his name was Michael. However, when his father Michael King Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King Sr. after becoming inspired by Martin Luther, his son, who was Michael King Jr., became Martin Luther King Jr. I nearly fell off of my bed when I received an e-mail later that evening from Tom letting me know that I had won the tickets! I told my husband we could celebrate our history as a couple by celebrating the history of our beloved city. He agreed that it would be a great way to celebrate our first date anniversary!

Tom Houck beginning his tour…

My hubby focusing on Tom…

Dr. King’s first home is in the Old Fourth Ward area of Atlanta which was once known as Shermantown after General Sherman took over the area during the Civil War. The home is on Auburn Avenue known as Sweet Auburn, but I didn’t know that Auburn Avenue was once Wheat Street. However, the name of the street was later changed because Wheat Street was thought to be too rural of a name for a metropolitan street. Yes, Sweet Wheat doesn’t sound as cool for sure! But that explains the name of the historical Wheat Street Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue. Wheat Street Baptist Church was the site of the church scenes filmed in the movie “Selma,” Tom told us.

In the beginning of the tour, we went by Dr. King’s elementary school Howard Elementary School. The school building, which is vacant, later became a high school which has notable graduates including Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor; Walt Frazier and Vernon Jordan. Tom also took us to the SNCC Freedom House. Freedom Houses were designated places where civil rights workers could retreat and reside.

The site of the pay phone where Tom met Dr. King…

Tom met Dr. King across the street of the SCLC headquarters, which I took a picture of from the bus…Not the best picture, but you get the idea hopefully…

Morris Brown College, the only HBCU founded by black people, was organized in the basement of Big Bethel AME Church, which is located in the Sweet Auburn district…Civil rights leader Hosea Williams and Derrick Bozeman are Morris Brown College graduates…

See that blue sign? It is the sign for the original site of the Atlanta Daily World, the oldest black newspaper in the city…It was once a Republican newspaper as blacks were mostly Republican years ago since most segregationists were Democrats…

A Loss Prevention Hero series mural honoring Congressman John Lewis…

The second The Loss Prevention Hero series mural honoring Mrs. Evelyn Gibson Lowery, the deceased wife of Rev. Joseph Lowery. Mrs. Lowery founded SCLC/Women’s Organizational Movement for Equality Now, Inc.

Although it wasn’t an official part of the tour, Tom told us that Citizens Trust Bank, which was founded by black businessman Heman Perry, on Auburn Avenue, was where he received his first car loan! AND Daddy King, who was on the bank’s board of directors, co-signed the loan!!!

Before we left the Sweet Auburn district, we learned about John Wesley Dobbs, a rail clerk who was unofficially named the mayor of Sweet Auburn because of his work to achieve equality for black people…Seemingly in homage to Dobbs, Atlanta’s public schools were integrated on the day of this death, August 30, 1961, Tom told us…Above is a statue honoring Dobbs, who is the grandfather of Maynard Jackson…All of his six daughters graduated from Spelman College. They are reported to be the largest group of sisters to graduate from the school…Incidentally, I interviewed Dr. June Dobbs Butts, the youngest of the sisters and a sex therapist, for an UPSCALE magazine article I wrote years ago…

We rode by the now defunct Terminal Station, which was once a prominent train station in the city. Atlanta was once named Terminus which I originally learned after watching “The Walking Dead,” which is back tonight!!! Yay!!! And before Terminus, Atlanta was known as Marthasville. I cannot see Atlanta residents calling ourselves Termliens or Marthaaliens so I’m glad we changed to Atlanta because ATLlien is so doggone cool…

We passed through the Castleberry Hill District, which was revitalized by Herman J. Russell, a construction magnate…I had the opportunity to meet him just months before he passed away in 2014. He attended the National Book Club Conference while promoting his book Building Atlanta: How I Broke Through Segregation to Launch a Business Empire.”

Tom took us to Dr. King’s last home before he died which is located at 234 Sunset Avenue…

Daryl, a recent graduate of Clark Atlanta University, sang freedom songs as we passed by some of the historical stops…

Along the way, we passed by Washington High School where Dr. King graduated from when he was 15 years old to attend Morehouse College. I did not know that Lena Horne also attended Washington High School!

One of the stops was the home of Alonzo Herndon, who was once Atlanta’s wealthiest black man. Herndon built his fortune on his barbering business. His stately home is across the street from the home of Grace Towns Hamilton, the first black woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly. Unfortunately, her home was barely visible due to the overgrowth of weeds as well as the overall decay of the structure…We also passed through the Atlanta University Center and by the original Paschal’s Restaurant location as well as Busy Bee Café.

One of our final stops was South-View Cemetery, which is located on Jonesboro Road and was designed “to provide a respectable place for Christian burials” for all people including black people who were once not allowed to be buried in certain cemetaries. It opened on April 21, 1886. It began as 26 acres and is now over 100 acres. 80,000 people are buried there including Herman J. Russell and the wife of John Lewis, Lillian Miles Lewis. Below are pics of the graves of other important people who are also buried there…

The grave site of John Wesley Dobbs

The grave sites of Daddy King and his wife Alberta King…

If you look at to upper left of the grave marker, you can see this tiny picture of Daddy King….

Dr. King was originally buried in South-View cemetery before his body was moved in 1970 to its current location alongside his wife at the King Center. One the way back to Auburn Avenue where we started the tour, we passed by Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Tom told us that Marcus Garvey was imprisoned there which is interesting to me as the daughter of Jamaican immigrants.

We learned much more that I wasn’t even able to include in this already lengthy blog post!

And hopefully, you will be inspired to take a Civil Rights Tour with Tom Houck, the driver of Dr. King and his family. For more information, go to civilrightstour.com.

Enjoy your Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday!

Any thoughts?

Posted on Sunday, December 11, 2016

Why Racist Reactions to Mall of America’s Black Santa, the Emanuel AME Church Shooting Trial & More Show America is Still Sick…

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

black-santa

Hello World,

It’s supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year,” a time when built-up grievances melt under the glow of multicolored Christmas lights and warm Christmas music, families flung far across the country corral themselves to remember their roots and strangers smile at one another for no other reason than to demonstrate “peace and goodwill to all men.” But this Christmas season of 2016, despite all of the light displays and songs, planned family pilgrimages and spontaneous smiles, the parasites of racism are still attached to America’s underbelly and will not release its host even for the reprieve of Christmas…

While I celebrate Jesus and not Santa Claus at Christmas, the image of Santa Claus, though not real, has always brought comfort and joy! A jolly man awarding nice not naughty children with gifts, who swoops down, with the help of reindeer led by Rudolph and his red nose, on homes across America every Christmas – what’s not to love? In the broader culture, yes, Santa Claus is typically white, but here in Atlanta, the birthplace of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I remember black Santas malls in black neighborhoods when I was growing up. Though I may be wrong, I don’t remember there being any controversy regarding being black Santas in some neighborhoods.

But I guess the first black Santa at the Minnesota’s Mall of America, no less, is too much! At least for some Americans…According to rawstory.com article “Santa is WHITE. BOYCOTT Mall of America’: Online racists are Having a Meltdown Over Mall’s Black Santa,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s editorial editor had to shut down comments on its black Santa article because of offensive comments. How disturbing particularly since Santa Claus is not even real! And Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas, who according to New Testament and early Christianity expert Harvard Professor Laura Nasrallah was ” born into a family that probably considered itself to be ethnically Greek but in an area of the world that we now call Turkey.” She further noted that, “Historically, you can’t import a category like ‘white’ into fourth century Asia minor,’ according to the politico.com article “Scholar: Santa Race Claim Nonsense” which was written after Fox’s Megyn Kelly said Santa Claus and Jesus were white in 2013.

Last year, I wrote the post “Why is the ‘Real Face’ of Jesus Controversial? The Real Christmas Story” about the medical artist Richard Neave’s rendering of the real face of Jesus going viral. I expressed confusion because “although my earliest recollections of portraits of Jesus featured a man with blonde hair and blue eyes which I probably learned about in Sunday School and or the private Christian school I attended as a child, I stopped believing those depictions were accurate once I understood the Christmas story even as a child. That was probably around the time that I read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and began to study world history. My deductive reasoning led me to believe that Jesus, while in human form, must have been of a darker hue and looked similar to those who live in the Middle East.”

All of this to say, a black Santa, or an Asian Santa, or a Hispanic Santa, etc. shouldn’t be offensive to anyone born in America (or elsewhere for that matter), which is promised to be the melting pot of all cultures and countries…

And then juxtapose that display of racism with the display of racism that is unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina where Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooter Dylan Roof is on trial for killing nine black churchgoers following a Wednesday evening Bible Study in 2015. In an FBI video, Roof said of his murderous acts, “Somebody had to do it.” According to the CNN article “Mass Shooter Dylann Roof, With a Laugh, Confesses,’I did it'” he also said, “Black people are killing white people everyday… What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day.” He specifically targeted the church because it is a historic black church. “It’s historic, too, you know. I think at one time it had the highest ratio of blacks to white during slavery, and AME is a historic church. I researched black churches.” Maybe it’s no coincidence that this church is named after the name of Jesus Christ that we use at Christmas time and that this trial is unfolding during the Christmas season. The Jesus Christ I believe in and know to be real wants all of His children to be treated as human beings. Anything less than that demonstrates that America still needs healing despite how far we have come.

Just miles away from me in Carrollton, Georgia, another display of racism at Christmas time happened last week. Gerald Byrd, who is black and Carrollton’s Mayor Pro Tem, was collecting pine cones in a local park for an art project, when he was approached and threatened by a white man after the man questioned him about why he was in a state park. “Then he said, ‘My wife is coming and she has something for you, too.’ Up comes his wife with a German shepherd and I’m too far from my car to run and I’m petrified,” Byrd said,” according to a wsbtv.com story. Byrd posted a video about the incident at the park shortly afterward on Facebook and has received death threats since then!

These are just three incidents that demonstrate how deeply America has been and is still infected by racism. At this time of the year, I would like to pretend that racism doesn’t exist and even just for a month (the last month of President Obama’s presidency,) we can all get along but sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case…

Any thoughts?

P.S. This some came out in 1973…

Posted on Sunday, November 13, 2016

Not My President? – Coping After Donald Trump Beat Hillary Clinton…

trump-pence

Hello World,

I had plans for a Wednesday morning blog post. Believe me. And then the election happened (or the Great American Apocalypse…I’m still not sure which and it’s too early to tell just yet…). I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday to confirm if what was being reported was really true: Donald “Make America Great Again” by insulting all of America Trump beat Hillary Clinton, clearly the most qualified candidate of the two. When I finally put myself to bed hours after my husband tried to coax me away from my office television, I was sure I was so exhausted I would sleep until at least 9 a.m. and then I would get up and whip up a blog post. But as the night disappeared and a new day emerged, I found myself waking up about three hours later. At first, I felt nothing, still in the hallway between the bliss of slumber and the jolt of a new day. Moments later, though, I felt it. All of it. The disbelief. The disappointment. The despair…The Donald…The Donald is the president-elect.

And then there was the déjà vu…I had felt like this before, but I couldn’t remember when. As the depression started to envelop me like the clouds that suddenly showed up in metro Atlanta on Election Day and haven’t dissipated since, I remembered. I felt the same way I did the first time I got dumped in high school. It was my first high school relationship, and it was magical. He walked me to class. He bought me teddy bears. He called me. And then it stopped because another girl decided she liked him. (Incidentally, he married that girl so I don’t feel so bad….I guess it was meant to be, but that’s another story for another day.)

But on the day I finally realized our relationship was over, I came into my house, slammed the door behind me and let out a wail as I made my way to the bathroom. My father, who worked from home, came up to me and attempted to comfort me. When I explained him what was wrong, he said something that was the emotional equivalent of “there, there.” I learned that day that there is some pain that parents cannot prepare you for and that the only way to get over the pain was to go through it…

So that mourning after Election Day, I did what I had to do: I got up, dressed and went to work. I could barely look at people wondering if they had voted for The Donald and inwardly blamed them for this country’s certain demise. For moments, I would forget and then it (all of it) would wallop me all over again. And then, the emotions would spread throughout me like I was coming down with something and then I would figure out a way to distract myself until the Ds reappeared again…

(The Donald dancing on my soul. )

So at this point, maybe some of you are asking what The Donald is so depressing about Donald Trump being the president-elect? If you don’t know, I don’t know if I can truly explain it to you…

But I will at least try…

It all goes back to when I was in first grade. I was the only black kid in my first grade class of white kids. No one was mean to me. I got along with everyone. But I felt different. I was different. My hair was kinky and didn’t flow down my back. My skin tone was a golden brown and the only other kid whose skin tone was close to mine was a Hispanic kid ( I think he was Hispanic. He was definitely brown.) I was an American girl born of Jamaican parents. I very much identified with Mowgli in “The Jungle Book.” I liked to learn and enjoyed what I was learning about, but I wanted to know more about my people – black people. As my reading skills progressed and I was promoted to higher grades, I sought out books about slaves in my school’s library and found many that I understood even as a child.

As I continued to grow, I continued to learn, recognizing that my skin tone connected me to the deep and dark history of the downtrodden of this country. Black people emerged from slavery only to be disenfranchised following Reconstruction. Jim Crow was exchanged for civil rights after much struggle. (A simple summary I know…) And then despite all of that, Nov. 4, 2008 happened. A miracle in our midst. I was so proud. Barack Obama was the right man for the right time. He represented the best and worst of our history. The son of a white Midwestern woman and a black African man, his very genealogy represented the free will joining together of Africa and America rather than what was forced on Africans centuries ago. As the son of a single parent (since he was not raised with his father), his rise to the presidency demonstrated that single mothers (who are often looked down upon when they are black ) raise children who are just as talented as those raised in two-parent households. His gentility. His sophistication. His good looks. His unabashed adoration for his black wife. His two beautiful girls. All of it. made me fall in love. I confess. There is little he can do wrong. (although I don’t agree with all of his stances.) He was the real-life manifestation of the dream of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

(What’s not to love about this?)

So when The Donald, who questioned the very birth of President Obama for years, was named president-elect to succeed him, I was let down, all the way down. What a dreadful insult! Aside from denouncing President Obama, Donald Trump has denigrated black people by calling us “The African Americans” with a tone that reminds me of how a zookeeper describes the different packs of animals that inhabit the zoo. In fact, the disdain in his voice seems to be a dog whistle for many white hate groups as many have voiced their support of him. (I’ve read a report that the Ku Klux Klan chapter plans to host a victory parade in North Carolina on Dec. 3.) Not to mention the fact that he seems to think we all live in the inner city and are fearful from emerging from our domiciles lest we be decimated by gun shots. Unlike President Obama, he was given millions to start his businesses. And he has been the husband to three women with children from each one. (Well, at the very least, people with baby mamas should no longer be disrespected.) He doesn’t look presidential. I’m not sure what that “look” is, but he doesn’t have it. And I don’t have the desire at the moment to get into his despicable “locker room talk” and disrespect to other groups. Other posts for other days…

I know that now that the election is over, we’re supposed to put all of that dissing away in favor of all is fair in love and politics, but who does that? And it’s not like he’s even asked for forgiveness. I mean according to the gospel of Donald Trump, forgiveness is not needed. Furthermore, his words tear down instead of build up. His beliefs change as much as he updates his Twitter feed. His nebulous past (since it seems we will never see his tax returns) only predicts a dim future.

So after all of this, is Donald Trump my president? Or is he #notmypresident ?

As a Christian (and that is the only reason why), I have declared that God is the ruler of my life and I know that He is the one who puts people in positions of authority. And so, I will do all I can to respect the office of the presidency despite those who decried it (namely Donald Trump) when President Obama was named. But that does not mean that when Donald Trump does something that goes against my principles, I won’t do all that I can to stop him. Some of history’s greatest rebels have used their Christian faith to dismantle injustices down through the years…

…I guess that’s all that I have to say about that…for now…

Any thoughts?

P.S. I have so many questions for God when I get to Heaven…Two more have been added to the list…1. Why did You allow Donald Trump win the election? 2. Why have black people had to suffer so much in this country?