A flood of memories returned as I participated in the Martin Luther King, Jr. march in Longview. It took about 20 minutes for a few hundred folks to stroll and sing “We Shall Overcome,” from Broughton Recreation Center to Mt. Olive Baptist Church for the service. We walked down MLK Boulevard, of course.
I thought back to 1968, a seminal year in our country’s history and my own personal history. On the morning of the New Hampshire primary, I passed out fliers in early March in a snowstorm in Pembroke, N.H., backing Eugene McCarthy, the anti-war candidate. I did so because a pretty college girl asked me to. (I was 12). I watched with great interest on our fuzzy black-and-white television on March 31, as Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election after nearly losing the New Hampshire primary to McCarthy.
Four days later, on April 4, King was assassinated while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Everyone I knew in lily-white New Hampshire was horrified and nervous about what would happen next. Riots ensued, though arguably not as severe as one might expect.
Meanwhile, we were preparing to move to Longview, where my paternal grandfather, recently widowed, lived. The economy in New England was sluggish, the winters gruesome. The moving van arrived a week or so after a second political killing left the nation stunned. Robert F. Kennedy was murdered by Sirhan Sirhan in early June, in the wee morning hours after winning the California primary.
The world appeared to be spinning apart. And we were moving to Texas, where another Kennedy had been killed less than five years earlier.
We spent the summer living with my grandfather in his small ranch-style house in Greggton. It was temporary, until my dad — a commercial artist — could find a job and my parents could buy a house. Across Harrison Road from Grampa’s home was a convenience store and laundromat. (Forgive me if you have heard this story before. It bears retelling.) I would walk over there to buy an ice cream sandwich, trying to adapt to the heat and humidity. (Nearly a half-century later, I still have not adapted. I loathe summer.) I noticed a sign hand-painted on the front glass: White Only.
I walked home and asked my mother how a laundromat could survive only washing sheets, pillowcases and towels. She sighed, shook her head and explained what “White Only” meant in East Texas in 1968.
I entered Longview High School the following year in 1969, the first year of full integration. Mary C. Womack, the black high school, was shut down, and its students shoehorned into the old campus just north of downtown. Times were tense. Fights broke out, police summoned. I laid low best I could, made friends with the people who interested or entertained me regardless of skin color.
I left Longview a year after graduating from high school, only returning to visit my parents. I finally moved back eight years ago to run the newspaper, until it sold in early 2010. Now, after several other newspaper gigs, I spend most my time working with a nonprofit that hopes to make a difference in the lives of young people. It is worthwhile work, a privilege to contribute in some small part.
I sat in the standing-room sanctuary of Mt. Olive after the march, listening to a fiery sermon from Dr. Cary Hilliard, pastor of First Baptist Church, a young white preacher. It occurred to me that we really have come a long way.
There is no doubt about that. But we still have a very long way to go. No doubt about that either.
