Checkers on the Hill, page 16
When he left, I locked the metal door and let out a big sigh as I leaned against it. Now I had to get in touch with the office at Bladensburg Elementary School. They assured me it was safe to have the children come to class. The buses were running, and there were absolutely no problems. It seemed like all the mothers stood in the parking lot when the bus pulled in that morning to see our children off to school. Everyone came back to collect their children later in the afternoon when it returned. No longer did only a couple of parents acting as parking lot chaperones greet them and escort them to their apartments. Every single child had a family member there to meet them and take them to their home. We were all so concerned about our children’s safety after what had happened in DC.
Later in the week, the television news covered Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral procession. It traveled from a family service at the Baptist church in Atlanta, where he had been a pastor, to Morehouse College for the public funeral. The three-mile procession was lined with hundreds of thousands of distraught mourners and thousands more watched on television. His casket rested on a simple wooden farm wagon drawn by a couple of mules. Lester Maddox, the governor of Georgia, refused to lower the state flags to half-staff, but a directive from the federal government forced him to do so. Despite Martin Luther King, Jr. being loved and admired by thousands, Maddox also refused to allow King’s body to lay in state in Georgia. He said he was “an enemy of the country.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. had numerous death threats against him during his lifetime. Before his death, when talking about his funeral, he said he did not want his awards and honors to be mentioned. Instead, he wanted it to be said that he tried to feed the hungry, love and serve humanity, and clothe the naked. At the end of the services, a large crowd sang “We Shall Overcome.”
Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, attended the services. I could not help but remember how different his brother’s funeral had been, just a few short years earlier. John Kennedy’s body had been moved in a horse-drawn caisson, and over 300,000 people watched as it traveled to the Capitol Rotunda to lay in state. During the cortege, the crowd remained silent. All you heard was the muffled drums and the sound of the horses’ hooves on the pavement as we mourned his passing. A spirited black horse was saddled for the procession, but symbolically, its rider was gone. When the casket was moved from the cathedral after the service, Jackie, Caroline, and John Jr. stood at the top of the steps. The sad image of three-year-old John Jr., who raised his little hand and saluted his father’s coffin, will remain in my mind forever. It was even sadder because it was his birthday. We had said goodbye to the shocking early deaths of men we admired. They had been working to make life better for us and others. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. We all wondered what could possibly happen next.
Chapter 11
Before another week passed in April, I started a job in Bel Air, Maryland. It was closer to our apartment than my DC job, with an easier commute than traveling into the city. I no longer needed to negotiate my way through those embassy areas where the diplomatic limousines constantly double parked. It wasn’t a prestigious job like working in an advertising agency. Now, I worked in a technical drafting department doing inking on drafting satin with Radiograph pens for charts, graphs, and diagrams using triangles, French curves, and all sorts of templates. It was the kind of work Cade had done at the agency. I was disappointed that it wasn’t a paste-up position. There was no possibility of any creative work with my new employer, but I had a job with good pay and benefits. Also, it was far from Fourteenth Street and in a safer area, and Cade did not work there. That was a big plus.
Samuel took us out to a well-known seafood restaurant to celebrate. It was famous for its Maryland crab cakes and other fresh seafood. We were reading the menu and trying to decide what to order. I encouraged Samuel to try something different from what he usually ate. “Why don’t you get the Blue Crab meal, Samuel?” I asked him. “It’s a popular meal in Maryland. They give you a platter of them to eat. Be courageous—try eating something you never tasted before. I like Chinese food now that I tried it with my friends from the agency.”
“Hmm, I don’t know about ordering crab like that. I think they give you a hammer or something, and you have to crack them open yourself. You know I don’t like food like shrimp that comes with its own crispy, inedible wrapper. I hate doing that fussy stuff of peeling those shells away to get at the little morsels of meat. Give me a big juicy grilled steak I can sink my teeth into and a beer and I’m a happy man,” he said, smiling.
“You’re a hopeless redneck, Samuel,” I told him, laughing, “but I love you anyway. I think I’m going to try the Blue Crab platter. I’ve heard it’s very good when you dip the meat in the melted butter they serve it with. Why don’t you at least try the crab cakes they’re famous for? I think you’ll like them.”
Samuel did order a crab cake sandwich on a toasted roll with a stuffed baked potato and coleslaw, and he enjoyed it. Our children had breaded shrimp with French fries they dipped in ketchup. They liked that the shrimp came with tail handles and they could eat everything with their fingers.
I thought the Blue Crab was delicious even though I had to use a bunch of tools like a surgeon to get at the meat. First, the waitress encouraged me to put a bib on because it would be messy. She gave me a mallet, a knife, and a sharp metal pick and showed me how to attack the crab shell with those tools and use the pick to get out the meat. It tasted delicious, and all the work was well worth it. The children laughed at Mommy wearing a bib and getting her hands all messy. I had melted butter dripping off my chin before I was done. During that dinner, having fun with Samuel and the children, I forgot all about the recent events that had been so upsetting.
Washington, DC, simmered down after the rioters vented their rage, as predicted. But there remained a silent undercurrent of tension that was constantly there. The extra troops that had been called out left, the federal Park Police returned to their usual posts helping confused or lost tourists with directions, and the government resumed daily operations at the Capitol and White House. War protestors returned to the steps of the Capitol for the senators and representatives to walk around and continue to ignore. The reality of the loss of life, injuries, and damage to apartments, workplaces, and shopping areas was sobering to the black community. Blocks and blocks of buildings stood as blackened, broken skeletons or smoldering piles of debris. So many buildings had been burned or destroyed by the 20,000 rioters. People started trying to rebuild their lives soon after and get back to whatever was “normal.” I settled into my new job in Bel Air the best I could. It was work and I would have a weekly paycheck. It was not interesting art to do, but I needed to keep working for my children and Samuel. He had a good job with a future at Mack Trucks and wanted to stay there. April passed, and then May, and soon Grace would graduate from kindergarten, which was a huge milestone for our little family.
Then another protest incident happened in DC. Everyone warned us to stay away from the National Mall. A tent city had been hastily erected down there with hundreds of activists living in it. On the south side of the land that flanked the reflecting pool, over 3,000 people were living in A-frame-style tents constructed from plywood, plastic sheeting, and canvas.
They named it Resurrection City, and it was part of the Poor People’s Campaign. It had been Martin Luther King’s idea to bring attention to the hunger, malnutrition, and poverty so many suffered in our country. The plan to build the tent city in Washington, DC, had been put on hold after his death. But members of the Southern Christian Leaders’ Conference decided to go forth with it a few weeks later. They wanted to make people aware of the inequality in income and the racism against black people and others in the United States. The camp had been populated with other impoverished races who had similar problems. There were Hispanics, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and even white coal miners from Kentucky and Hispanic farmworkers from California. The camp boasted of a city hall, a mess tent, general store, health clinic, and even a free barbershop for the people living there.
Its purpose was to provide a place for poor people and activists to live and go out daily to picket and meet with elected officials in the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the heads of various government departments, to present their demands and grievances. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was granted a permit to camp on the National Mall. However, there were limits on how many could stay there, and the time allotted to camp was only six weeks. The protestors wanted laws passed that provided a living wage for underprivileged working people of all ethnicities, job training, and financial protection for small farmers. They wanted food stamps available and school lunch programs for poor children who had nothing to eat. They believed our affluent nation, with its advanced medical capabilities, should be more accessible to the poor. They also wanted to inoculate our vulnerable children against diseases. And they wanted to know why teaching materials and proper education were not available to all American children equally. Another concern was why no real progress had taken place in desegregating schools, workplaces, and housing.
Local residents, like Samuel and me, were still on edge after the recent riots and the killing of Dr. King. People feared the camp would keep getting larger and that rioting would break out again in the district. However, this time it would be much closer to the White House. Samuel and I heard reports of arguments and thefts that had taken place in the camp. Some people staying there had been arrested. We kept far away from that area and only watched the happenings on television. President Johnson activated 20,000 soldiers just in case the protestors decided to take over the nation’s capital. Rumors spread that black militants had infiltrated the peaceful protestors’ camp, and more trouble was likely to happen. “Black Power” was painted on some structures in the camp. That phrase alarmed many as to what it could possibly mean. Tensions rose to the surface again in the district.
On June 5, American citizens, including those living in Resurrection City, were stunned by the news that one of our leaders had suffered another tragic death. Robert Kennedy, brother of President John Kennedy, had been shot and killed. He had recently won the Democratic primary in the state of California. He might have become our next president because he was so popular. President Lyndon Johnson had been unsuccessful in ending the war in Vietnam, so back in March 1968, he announced he wouldn’t run for president again. When he took office in 1963, he announced “A War on Poverty.” Nothing had been accomplished with that effort, though. That war on poverty had been put on the back burner to deal with the Vietnam War instead.
Candidate Bobby Kennedy was loved by many, and his campaign for president was well supported, not only because he was John Kennedy’s brother and had shown great composure and courage during the time of John’s assassination, but also because they felt he would unify our divided country. Minorities admired him for his steadfast loyalty to helping the cause of civil rights for everyone and his campaign to help the poor.
Robert was exiting the Ambassador Hotel when a twenty-two-year-old Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan shot him. The doctors worked for four hours trying to save his life, but he died the next day. It was another shocking, heartbreaking loss for our country when our hearts were so raw with all the other recent losses. He was only forty-two years old, a husband to Ethel, and a father of ten children. Ethel was three months pregnant with their eleventh child at the time of his death. During his lifetime, Robert had fought against organized crime. He went to South Africa in 1966 to speak against Apartheid. He spoke there about hope for change in the world and said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Bobby Kennedy also visited the poorest Americans and saw poverty at its worse and children with swollen bellies and open sores. He said, “It’s terrible to have all this in a country as affluent as ours.” He traveled to see the poor in the Mississippi Delta and the families in the produce fields of California. He talked firsthand with those living on Indian reservations and those in remote coal mining communities of Appalachia. With sincerity, he told the press, “I love these people.” He gave us all hope for a brighter future when everything seemed so hopeless.
His death was another devastating blow to our morale. I felt like our world, the world I had grown up in, would never be the same. Our leaders were being killed in our own country in the prime of their lives. It was almost as if we lived in some third-world country run by dictators instead of the United States of America. We were in an unpopular war in Vietnam that we could not win. Our young people were losing their lives or becoming crippled mentally and physically in that war, and the government was purposely altering the numbers of true data about what was happening over there and lying to us. Even the dreams of an exciting space program to explore the galaxy and land a man on the moon were in jeopardy. Racism, segregated neighborhoods, and schools still existed, with no hope that it would soon change for the better. And there remained so much violence and anger across the nation, for one reason or another. A foreboding of hopelessness hovered over us all at these troubled times. It was difficult to imagine things would get better and believe in the American Dream. It was easier to just accept that we now lived in a dangerous, unfair world. That golden rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” seemed to no longer be in practice. We were left with the day-to-day sense that life is unfair and another terrible thing was sure to happen at any moment.
I was just hanging in there emotionally after what happened to my friend Hope. The terror of going through the riots added greatly to my sadness and stress. I had hoped that time would help me put it all behind me. I no longer worked near the blocks that were destroyed by the riots in DC, but I remained uncomfortable shopping for groceries or doing any usual activities I had done so carelessly and easily before. Since Hope and Eli had left, Samuel and I had not even gone on our usual weekend outings with the kids to see the sights. I missed Maria, Dean, Booker, and even Lyla at the agency and the carefree fun we experienced going out to lunch together and laughing. The joy of living in an exciting new place and working my dream job had been swept away. The torrent of riots and assassinations had replaced it with a strong hesitation to go anywhere that was crowded. Now, I never wanted to go out after dark for any reason.
I had a shorter drive to work, but the streets were still jammed with commuters every morning rushing to make it to their jobs on time. I was running late one day and going as fast as traffic allowed when I noticed the red light on the dash, signaling that I needed to get gas. “Not now!” I said, annoyed. “Give me a break, will ya? I haven’t got time for this!” I yelled at the car as if it could understand my frustration and do something.
I knew I must stop because I wasn’t sure how long that darn light had been on. I seldom paid attention to the dials or lights on the dash. I relied on Samuel to monitor the car’s needs. I watched for a gas station as I pulled forward with all the other traffic as if we were linked in a fast-moving, invisible chain. I finally spotted a station coming up on my right side, broke my link to the others, then pulled in beside a pump.
An attendant came out and asked, “How much you want, lady?” Then he started pumping the gas and came back around to wash my windshield while my car was filling.
He finished pumping the gas and asked if I wanted him to check the oil in my engine, to which I replied, “No, thanks, I’m in a hurry.” I paid him, pulled my car away from the pump, and waited at the edge of the driveway for a break in the line of speeding commuter traffic. There were bumper-to-bumper cars, as far as I could see, with no openings to get back out. I eased the car as far forward as possible so I would be ready when that opening came. I’ll probably have to floor it, I thought. Everyone sped by so fast that I worried about not getting back in line.
As I waited, I saw a movement off to my left on my side of the sidewalk further down the street. It was a man with what looked like a big plastic garbage bag flung over his shoulder, walking toward me. My car blocked the sidewalk as I waited for that opening in traffic.
“Come on, people, let me out,” I said out loud as I pounded my fingers on the steering wheel. “I have to get to work too.” My window was partially down, but there was no way those drivers could hear me. The man with the garbage bag was coming closer and would be near my car soon. He would have to walk around the back of my car, I thought, and I kept watching traffic. I glanced in my rearview mirror. Darn, another car was tight on my bumper, waiting to leave the station too. The man had almost reached my car door now. I could see he was a young man with what now looked like a full bag of laundry over his shoulder. He was not happy I was blocking the sidewalk. He came close, stopped right beside my door, and glared angrily at me. Then he said, “Move it, bitch!”
