Civil Rights

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States.  Did you notice?  Did you have the day off work?  Did you go to a parade? 

Yea, me neither.  What a shame.  I had to work.  Almost everyone I know had to work.  My husband is a government employee, so he didn't have to work.  He would have golfed if the weather had been good.  I'm sure he didn't spend any of his day off thinking about civil rights and the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Jr.

He isn't a racist.  Neither am I.  Quite the opposite.  It is simply so far from our day to day existence, in the world of white privilege that we live in, that it barely made a blip on the radar of our lives.  And, not to get off the subject, but when exactly did companies decide that holidays that the United States government took the time and effort to vote into existence, should not be acknowledged?  My company, like so many others, doesn't recognize Veterans Day, Columbus Day or Presidents Day either.  How long until Christmas is optional?

Anyway, back to the point.  Other than a few of my friends who posted MLK quotes on their facebook page, the day would have been completely unnoticed by me, I am ashamed to say. 

After all of this unnoticing though, something a bit strange happened.  I dreamed last night.  This isn't unusual.  I have the craziest, most vivid dreams of any adult person I know.  And I often remember them in detail.  I may have mentioned this before.  It is a crazy, little known fact about me.  You could make a Stephen Spielberg action/adventure out of some of my dreams.  But my dreams last night were unique, even for me. 

These dreams seemed very, very real.  Either it was very short snippets of dreams, or one long dream that kept changing, but it happened all night long.  In each snippet, I was transported to a time in the past.  All different eras.  And in each snippet I was accompanied by one or more African Americans; in a few of them, in the slippery way that dreams can change about, I was actually African American myself.  And in all of them, something bad happened.  Nothing earth shattering.  These weren't Stephen Spielberg dreams.  In each of them, some perfectly normal everyday activity was marred by racism.  And I truly felt that I was sent to a place and time that it actually happened to witness it; they were just that real.  What do I remember now, specifically, half a day later?  Not as much as I had tried to commit to memory, but here are some.

Standing in a cafeteria food line with a black family (era perhaps late 1960s).  The server turned and walked away, refusing to serve them. 
Being spit on outside a movie theater (apparently for daring to want to see the movie) (again late 60s or early 70s). 
Watching a white student turn up a tray of food into a black students chest while calling him a stupid 'N' (recent).
Hiding in a hay wagon, terrified, with several other people (I don't remember why, era previous century).
Going to a restaurant (era 1950s) with a very nicely dressed black couple and being pulled aside at the door to be told that we couldn't eat there.
Standing in a soup kitchen line (era 1930s), getting served my food and having the serving person dump a full ladle of soup onto the feet of the black man behind me instead of on his plate, then tell him sorry too bad, only one scoop per person. 
Being told as a child that I couldn't play with my friend any more because now that we were older it was inappropriate to play with 'colored' children.

This is just a few that I can remember, imperfectly, now.  This went on all night long in my sleep, there were probably 50 or more like these, some were much more violent.  If I didn't know it was impossible, I would say they were memories.  I certainly can't place them to any movie or book, but it is possible they are scenes my mind created based on those.  I don't know. 

I don't know why I dreamed these things.  I wasn't pondering racism or even MLK when I went to bed.  I hadn't watched anything on TV.  I didn't eat anything strange.  The last email I read/wrote had everything to do with Michaela and nothing to do with racism. 

As I thought about my dreams this morning, I remembered this quote: 

‎'In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.' Martin Luther King, Jr.

To the author of my dreams:  I got a lesson in empathy last night.  I won't forget.  Thank you.