My MOM was born the year before school segregation ended.
She was NINE when MLK was shot.
She remembers race riots in her school over school segregation ending in our home state.
My MOTHER lived through this. She’s 61 years old–which means while her own health is shot, people from her generation will be around for another twenty to thirty years.
1956. This is not colorized. IT WAS SHOT IN COLOR. Look at that–segregation was still ongoing in the age of neon lights.
Same exhibit. 1956. Banana splits, poodle skirts, and the ability to get “colored” drinking water only from the white folks’ backwash. You can see the pipe connecting the white tank to the colored fountain behind the little girl in the light pink dress.
Less than ten years later. That’s Martin Luther King, Jr. in the middle. Have you ever seen him in a color photograph before? There are many, but for some reason … maybe because black-and-white makes things look old … nobody ever uses them.
Look at the bank logo in the back. Colored squares like that were a thing in the mid-to-late 1960s. The slicked-down hair on the Black girl in front says we’re not yet to the mid-1970s, and since these signs all say “Honor King” it’s quite likely this is 1969-1970. You know what else was happening in 1969? Not Woodstock, not the moon landing, although both of those things happened. No, something we think of as being much more recent.
1969 was the launch of ARPANET, which would later become the Internet. BLACK PEOPLE WERE STILL MARCHING FOR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS WHEN THE INTERNET WAS STARTED.
This picture was taken sometime between 1956 and 1958. I don’t have a precise date on it, but the sleeveless sundress says later 1950s, the hair on Orange Plai says this was after Elvis, and the stars on the flag say that’s not a modern 50-star flag, which was first used in 1959. (We had a single year, 1958, with 49 stars.)
Ah yes. It was so long ago. Let’s get some more perspective:
Donald Trump was eight years old when school segregation was declared illegal in 1954. He was nineteen when the police beat and shot at peaceful Black protest marchers in Selma, Alabama and twenty-two when MLK was assassinated by the FBI for trying to encourage desegregation.
Hillary Clinton was seven when school segregation was declared, eleven when it went into effect, and eighteen when Selma happened.
Bernie Sanders was thirteen when the integration ruling occurred, 19 when Ruby Bridges started going to a formerly all-white school, and twenty-four when Selma happened. Joe Biden is only a year younger than Bernie.
Elizabeth Warren was eleven when Ruby started her new school, fifteen when Selma happened, eighteen when MLK was shot.
You will notice that all of these people are running for President, or were rumored to be running for President, this year. They’re not just alive, they’re thriving. And they were all alive for desegregation–in fact Trump, Clinton, and Sanders were all old enough to either endorse or oppose what happened at Selma.
But let’s keep looking, because they’re probably outliers, right?
Hm. Three of MLK’s children are still alive. They’re between 56 and 62 years old. (His elder daughter died of unknown causes; her family suspects an undiagnosed heart condition.) In fact one of his siblings is still alive, and she was born before him! She’s 96.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Yeah, she was 21 when school integration was made the law of the land. And she’s still serving on the Supreme Court.
But tell me again how long ago it was.
I’m sure the people from those generations are all dead, after all.
2087
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