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CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN AN MLK JR. CONFIDANT AND A MODERN-DAY ACTIVIST
THE COLORED
WAITING ROOM
Empowering the Original and the New Civil Rights Movements
Kevin Shird
with Nelson Malden
The Colored Waiting Room: Empowering the Original and the New Civil Rights Movements
Conversations Between an MLK Jr. Confidant and a Modern-Day Activist
Copyright © 2018 by Kevin Shird.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be sent by e-mail to Apollo Publishers at [email protected].
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover and interior design by Rain Saukas.
Upper front cover photographs by:
Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash (top right).
Spenser H on Unsplash (bottom right).
5chw4r7z on Flickr (top and bottom middle, and center left).
Alyssa Kibiloski on Unsplash (top left).
Andy Omvik on Unsplash (bottom left).
Photo inserts courtesy of Kevin Shird and Nelson Malden.
Bottom front cover photograph by Jim Peppler, courtesy of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
Print ISBN: 978-1-948062-01-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-948062-08-4
Printed in the United States of America.
contents
Introduction
Part I
1: Heading South
2: Martin
3: America Lynched
4: Bloody Sunday
5: The Colored Waiting Room
6: March On
Part II
7: The Awakening
8: I Am A Black Man
9: Don’t Boo, Vote
10: Leaders Among Us
11: Knowledge Is Power
12: Women Who Lead
13: In the End
14: Murder in Memphis
Afterword: Race in America
Timeline
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I remember the first time I saw images from the Jim Crow era: photographs of signs that read “Whites Only” or “No Negroes Allowed.” I was about ten years old at the time. Those signs, it was explained to me, were a symbol of the many dehumanizing laws and social practices that prompted the beginning of the American civil rights movement. The photographs that followed, images of people who weren’t allowed entrance to places, or could only go into lesser quality ones designated “For Colored People,” were black, like me, and their skin color was the only reason for the segregation enforced on them. If I had been alive when they were and living where they were, I, too, would have been denied entrance.
Yet the photos meant very little to me, and I was emotionally detached from what the people in them were experiencing. I had not experienced racism at that time in my life, and I knew very little of its history. I grew up in Baltimore City and nearly everyone I knew was black, and the few white people I’d encountered in my short time on earth seemed harmless enough. I’d never been told I couldn’t go into a store or drink from a fountain or swim in a pool because of the color of my skin. So when I first saw those demeaning placards, emblems of a hate-filled and dangerous culture, I didn’t feel the trauma and the pain that millions of black people suffered living under those conditions. Those labels that represented segregation seemed like they couldn’t have been real, even though there were people around me who were old enough to remember the period when those signs were posted and their rules were enforced.
Fast forward to much later in my life, in 2013, and modern-day racism is unfolding in front of my eyes, all our eyes. We’re not reading about it in a history book: we’re seeing it on the daily news, on social media, or in person. The racism isn’t new, but what shines a bright light on it is the public furor and demonstrations following the acquittal of a man who shot and killed a seventeen year old in Sanford, Florida.
Social media spreads the news like wildfire and protests erupt. #BlackLivesMatter goes viral. It becomes the name of an activist organization and is chanted by protestors and written boldly on signs. It gets used at protests that follow later that year and in ones to come. Black people are putting their foot down, saying enough is enough, that blacks need to not be assumed to be guilty of crimes, to be troublemakers—or worse, deserving of being accosted by police when the police know they are innocent, or set up for crimes—that they deserve respect, like white people more frequently get. The protestors are calling for justice and equality, something that should not be controversial, but not everyone sees it this way. Some people even call the group racist, as if black equality would somehow hurt white people. #AllLivesMatter trends on social media and then #WhiteLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter. I begin looking out for #DolphinLivesMatter; why not continue with the absurd, why not continue missing the point?
It’s been unsettling for me to think that there might be more Americans concerned about the phrase “Black Lives Matter” than about the need for black people, and like-minded activists of all races, to combat systemic racism. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. America has a long history of being averse to people who decide to mount a vigorous campaign to protect civil rights and stand up against discrimination and injustice. This practice didn’t end when we left behind the era of the Black Panthers and bell-bottoms. Pages in the history books of our children may repeat themes in the pages of ones I grew up with. Are we then having a second-wave civil rights movement? Could looking back at the original movement contextualize ours today?
There’s a significant disconnect between the baby boomers of yesterday, who are old enough to remember a very different world, and a new generation of iPhone fanatics and Starbucks aficionados with short attention spans. Many people in this internet-enabled era have little interest in what happened two days ago, let alone fifty years ago before most of us were even born. How can we ensure that the sacrifices made many years ago to secure our civil rights are respected and understood by the generations that follow? How do we connect the dots between the struggles of the 1950s and 1960s against segregation and the struggles we face today as we continue to strive for social justice in America? I believe that knowledge of the past can help us draft a blueprint to fix what’s broken in our society today, but we have to be willing to look back to look forward.
During the American civil rights movement, the media played a key role in the movement’s success. The images shown on television were critical: protestors being brutalized by police, students being blasted with fire hoses and set upon by vicious attack dogs. If not for the media’s role in broadcasting those repulsive images, America might not have been so inclined to become sympathetic to the cause
The media still plays an invaluable role in social