Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Today is the anniversary of his murder.

I was born and raised in Ohio in a white neighborhood. My mother was prejudice of everyone. Their ancestry, race, religion, even people from certain states.

A black woman helped her wash the windows, once or twice a year. Mother feared black men.  Sounds funny, but my mother was born in 1906 and as late as the 1950's people felt that way.  

My father listened, but never agreed or disagreed. I knew at an early age disagreement with my mother meant a fight, but I'd like to think my father's feelings were akin to mine. Unlike my mother, Daddy grew up poor and possibly felt bias because his family was poor.      

My husband and I were talking with a friend in the friend's office, I forget the subject, what I remember is by impulse I laid my hand on the friend's hand, then removed it. He froze mid-sentence and stared at me. Then said, "You've never touched a black person before."

I nodded. There was a saying that accurately described the situation in the 1950's and earlier.  Southerners don't care how close blacks get as long as they don't get to high. Northerners didn't care how high they get as long as they didn't get to close.

That touch on the hand, broke any northern prejudice I didn't know it set me on the path I'm on today. In the military I have numerous black friends. In my old age I'm once again living in a white world.  The following is how I feel about black people.

Most of their ancestors were here before mine, pre-revolutionary war.  The rest arrived before most white immigrants, pre-civil war. They were slaves, who's drudgery built an American economy, cleared land and built farms (plantations). They were in shackles, but their part in building the United States of America was equal to my white ancestors.

I am truly sorry for what Black Americans have had to endure in their country. Black leaders please stop telling blacks what they've had to deal with and tell them who they are, Americans, whose ancestors actually slaved to build America. Embrace their heritage and stop calling themselves African-American. Let them know they are Americans, this is their country.

I don't call myself, German, English, Irish, American. I am an American. The United States of American was built by my ancestors who handed down the most powerful nation in the world to me.

If black leaders and parents instilled this pride in their children. Give them the desire to  support the country they inherited. Teach white people to respect black people with such deep American roots.  I want to hear black people repeat the next lines I am about to write.

New comers to our shores welcome, we're a country of colors, it's the country my ancestors built, support it and help maintain the American dream.