I remember Martin Luther King Jr as a real human being. People around me called him "Martin Luther Coon" and he was much despised. He was a troublemaker, someone who only wanted attention for himself. He used the suffering of mistreated black folk, Nigra's (NIG-rah) is what we called them, only to further his celebrity and wealth. He was a philanderer and a confidence artist, the story went, who was now being tracked by the FBI for colluding with communists to ultimately force the US surrender in Vietnam.
Still, he was safer than Malcolm X, and a hell of a lot more preferable to those thugs and criminals who called themselves the Black Panthers. We were relieved that King, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers seemed to fight with each other more than find common cause. So, we approved of President Johnson's careful movements to ally with Dr. King. It seemed better than the alternatives. We were certainly happy he stayed out of Texas.
A counterpoint to all this uninformed, conspiracy-fueled hatred for me was "the help." This was the polite term used to refer to my parent's full-time housemaid and nanny whom I, as a young child, also called Bobbie. She was a proud, quiet, self-educated black woman who served as the only functional parental figure in my life. I loved her more than I could say then.
Bobbie quietly kept herself informed about "the movement," what they called the struggle for civil rights back then, and was very discrete with her views. I don't think my parents knew (or cared that) she could read. I would ask her questions, and she would answer me honestly, carefully answering without spilling too much of her political views in the process.
Bobby had already gone home by the time Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. My parents were mostly fearful that there would be rioting locally, and that the lid that had so far been more or less kept on "the Negro problem" would blow off in an explosion of local violence. There was a lot of talk around the dinner table that evening about how he should have known better, and while it's sad for anyone to be murdered, we don't exist on an island. One has to take into account social order when promoting social improvement. One can't just go around calling everyone out all the time, etc, etc, etc.
The bottom line was that it was ultimately Dr. King's fault he got shot. It was the only inevitable outcome of the kind of trouble-making he was famous for. These Negros have forgotten their place.
I sat quietly and listened to all that, increasingly suspicious that my parents were full of shit, and I wondered if Bobby would come to work the next day. She did.
I offered her a hug when I saw her, and she held me tight and sobbed quietly for a moment. She looked at me with tear-stained eyes and said "the violence has got to stop. I don't know what to do any more." Then, as was her way, she began slowly clearing the breakfast table to start her day, it was about time for me to walk to school. I just remember she looked so, so sad. That was the last we talked about Dr. King until I graduated from high school ten years later.
She gave me a leather-bound copy of Louis Fisher's biography of Gandhi, and a small paperback copy of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. "I know you'll read these," she said with a smile "I want to make sure you've completed your education." I nodded. "I'm so proud of the man you've become, so happy with 'the content of your character'" she said with a knowing smile (I quoted that speech frequently as a child). Turning to the book she said "Dr. King regarded Gandhi as his political mentor. I think you'll see why when you read this."
I still have both those books, now dog-eared and marked-up, in my library forty years later. That was the last time I saw Bobby. She singularly saved me from the conditioning of the racists around me as a child. I didn't believe what they told me about black people because I knew her. I knew it wasn't true.
She was soldier in the movement, a non-violent warrior who battled for my soul, and won. I have lived in Harlem for the last seventeen years of my life, longer than I've called any single place home. I'm not so self-deluded to say something like "Many of my friends are black people!" I'm actually happier to say I don't keep track of friends using racial categories. I'm not even sure who among my large cadre of mixed-race acquaintances identify as "black."
Dr. King didn't die that day, he lives on with all who do his work. He lives on in David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, in those patriots in wheelchairs who disrupt corrupt Congressional hearings held in the perfunctory theater that congress has become.
He lives, and lived long beyond April 4, 1968, in Bobby, who pointed me to the Truth.
Keep hope alive.
