A Walk with Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Nellie Curtiss …

I was in 6^th grade when I first heard of Martin Luther King, Jr.  As a dependent (brat) at Craig AFB in Selma, Alabama, I wondered what the movement was all about.

Signs calling King a communist were plastered all over Selma, Al.  My parents were not as informed as I wished they were.  The commander of the Air force Base issued strict orders that no personnel or families were allowed to participate with the march nor allowed to align themselves in anyway with the civil rights leader.

The notion was circulated that he and the people who came for the march were not from Selma or Alabama but were “Northerners here to cause trouble.”  I didn’t understand because King was called Reverend; and I wondered why he was disrupting society and what was he doing?

Later when I was in high school, the same rumors were passed along regarding the escalating civil rights movement and Malcolm X.  My dad warned me, “Under no circumstances are you to join any student group and especially not “Students for a Democratic Society.”  That was the year that students were jumped getting off the bus even in base housing.

But in class with Mr. Silvera and Mrs. Snow, I learned that King was trying to change the prejudices that we still had even 100 years after the emancipation and Civil War.  I learned that King was advocating non-violent protests to change how we thought about each other.  He was standing up for the working class and equal pay.

I wanted to walk with King during the Selma to Montgomery March but I could only stand on the running board of my dad’s car to peek out at the commotion through the trees and businesses. 

I cried like I wept for JFK when King was assassinated.  By then I had learned that he was like Ghandi in his movement to help people have equal rights.  I was so sad that we lost King because he was making a difference in our lives and Americans were changing their values and embracing diversity.

We have the right to vote, all of us, as a result of his work.  Galveston finally removed the segregated public water fountains and bathrooms along the seawall and in Menard Park.  In college and high school, we finally have integrated studies where we learn about Native Americans, Blacks Latino/Latinas, and women’s literature—not just dead white men’s writing.  Gloria Steinem took cues for the women’s rights movement from King.  Even Tennis was touting women’s freedom in 1973 with Billy Jean King’s match versus Bobby Riggs.

There was dancing in the streets as the song proclaimed and burning of girdles and bras and hair being let down and grown long.  The whole 40’s and 50’s iconic lifestyle morphed into the freedom of the 60’s and remade the nation. 

I have long been thankful for the freedom we found with Martin Luther King, Jr., and I wish that I could have met him in person.

The world’s walk with King was fleeting because of a shortsighted assassin; but King’s lessons are long lasting blessings and reminders to keep building the dream of a color-blind society.   

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. (from I have a Dream speech)

— Nellie Curtiss is a retired college educator and long-time local columnist. Reach her at columnsbynellie.com or email her at columnsbynellie@gmail.com