(As we remember the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1/15/29 – 4/4/68), whose powerful words continue to embolden us to speak and to act to end racial injustice into the 21st Century, I share the following true event from the life of my family which happened on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 1996. In the aftermath of Ferguson, et al, the point of my sharing this story, again, is to show how any city in America could potentially be or have been a Ferguson, even Winston-Salem.)
The Night We Became King by Carly Pete
My then twenty-year-old son, Lawrence, knocked at our bedroom door, then rushed into the darkened room; it was after 1:00 in the morning.
“Turn on the light,” I said.
He flipped the switch on the wall, rushed over to kneel at our bedside and whispered over his sleeping dad to me, “Ma, the police just chased me up the path and I didn’t do nothin’! I promise!” he panted. I sat up in bed, for the moment forgetting about the verbal chastisement I’d planned – how Lawrence was disrespecting our house rules, needed to find a job or go back to school, and should set a better example for his younger brother.
“Chased you? What for?” I said.
Mike, my husband, woke. “What happened?”
“Lawrence just got home.”
There was a knock at the front door.
Lawrence paced the floor, raking his fingers through his inch long dreadlocks, eyes bulging, wide and frightened, “Ma, Daddy-M! I promise you, I didn’t do nothin’!”
Unlike the weed smoking, sometimes disrespecting, high school dropout he’d lately become, this Lawrence standing before me reflected the innocence of young Loncy, his preschool self, the child who exclaimed in a moment of epiphany in the parking lot of his daycare center, “Good grief, today is tomorrow!” when he’d forgotten to bring his toy for show and tell. I believed him; he hadn’t done anything wrong. So, why were the police chasing my son?
“Alright, go upstairs,” I whispered. Quickly, Mike pulled on a pair of jeans, I threw on a robe and we answered the door.
Two uniformed officers, both Caucasians, were standing on our front porch. One of them informed us there had been a robbery at the store a block away on Baux Mountain Road, that the attendant said the two suspects were young Black males, that they had seen a man fitting that description enter our house through the side door. We should give them permission to search our house.
I said, “No.”
“But, ma’am, do you realize these men could be dangerous and might harm your family?”
Before my garrulous Chicago-born husband could engage the officers in menial chit chat about the details of the robbery, possibly even tell them the person they saw enter our home was our adult son, I interjected calmly, “No one’s here, but our family.”
I meant no disrespect to my husband, but felt this situation demanded the expertise of a Winston-Salem born Black woman who loved and understood her Black men. I had credentials as a daughter, sister to five brothers, wife, and mother of three sons – Michael, Lawrence and Christopher. I knew firsthand that Black men face many pitfalls in American society simply to grow up undefiled, find decent jobs, and raise a family.
The officers threatened to call headquarters to get a search warrant. We said they needed one. I turned on the television in the living room drowning out the crackling of the police radio. CNN had begun reporting on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., broadcasting excerpts from his “I Have A Dream” speech. The sound of Dr. King’s voice bathed us in a balm of serenity, strengthening our resolve to protect our son and the sanctity of our home. It was King Day for the Banner-Williams Family.
After multiple CNN broadcast loops, the officers returned. When my husband answered, one of them implored Mike to check our house for intruders since we wouldn’t let them do it. Mike obliged; he checked the laundry room area, the adjacent bath and guest room. No, our home was secure from intruders he informed them. He then thanked the officers for their concern, said, “Good night,” and shut and locked the door, rousing ten-year-old Christopher upstairs, who leaned over the banister and asked what was going on. I told him everything was fine, for him to go back to sleep.
Mike and I sat together on the sofa waiting for the officers to return for what seemed a very long time, listlessly awake, while CNN droned over and over again its news reporting interspersed with black and white footage of Blacks and Whites protesting against segregation and for civil rights, the images and commentary spurring us to greater vigilance: We became Civil Rights.
At dawn, the policemen returned and told us they’d found the two suspects hiding under the woodpile of our next-door neighbor’s house. Together, our family had advanced justice, procuring a portion of the Dream, for our sons, for one night.
About Carly Pete: Carly, a 2013 graduate of Salem College, earned B.A. degrees in Communication and Creative Writing. She resides in Winston-Salem, where she works as a communication consultant, lyricist and writer.
Showing posts with label race relations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race relations. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Monday, December 8, 2014
OpEd: Race Relations in the Piedmont Triad ~~ Waiting for Thanksgiving
By Carly Pete
Thanksgiving is my favorite food event not counting family members’ birthdays. This year’s planning was interrupted by an announcement the Monday before that the grand jury in Ferguson did not indict the murderer of Michael Brown, an unarmed local teen.
Bamboozled, duped, hoodwinked. What?
How could this possibly be? There were multiple eyewitness accounts to the killing, one even contemporaneous to the shooting. But the 12-member grand jury – six white men, three white women, two black women and one black man – voted no indictment; nine votes were needed to indict.
Do the math.
I’m troubled about the three-month delay announcing this decision, as well as its timing, choosing to announce during the week of Thanksgiving. Were black people supposed to drown our sorrows in turkey, dressing, gravy, and other comfort foods? Maybe, eat cake and get over it? I can’t swallow.
White policemen are killing black boys.
During their teenage years was when I first noticed a change in the way my sons were treated by white police officers. As they grew, which coincided with them leaving the safety of our yard, they sometimes met with friends on the corner where we lived: Policemen told them they couldn’t “congregate” on the corner. The further they strayed into society – high school, the park, the mall – unaccompanied by my husband or me, the more attention they attracted from police. My sons constantly complained that the police officers harassed the black kids, but seemed oblivious to what the white kids said and did. My sons survived; however, potentially life threatening encounters with local police did occur. My sons now have sons.
Black men are men.
Let’s face it. Generally speaking, it’s not black officers or female officers who are killing young black men, it is white policemen. In fact, many black officers working undercover have themselves been killed by fellow white male officers. Something is deadly wrong here; we need to fix this, for all our sakes.
Waiting for Thanksgiving…
I boycotted Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year. I’m waiting for justice.
About Carly Pete: Carly, a 2013 graduate of Salem College, earned B.A. degrees in Communication and Creative Writing. She resides in Winston-Salem, where she works as a communication consultant, lyricist and writer.
Thanksgiving is my favorite food event not counting family members’ birthdays. This year’s planning was interrupted by an announcement the Monday before that the grand jury in Ferguson did not indict the murderer of Michael Brown, an unarmed local teen.
Bamboozled, duped, hoodwinked. What?
How could this possibly be? There were multiple eyewitness accounts to the killing, one even contemporaneous to the shooting. But the 12-member grand jury – six white men, three white women, two black women and one black man – voted no indictment; nine votes were needed to indict.
Do the math.
I’m troubled about the three-month delay announcing this decision, as well as its timing, choosing to announce during the week of Thanksgiving. Were black people supposed to drown our sorrows in turkey, dressing, gravy, and other comfort foods? Maybe, eat cake and get over it? I can’t swallow.
White policemen are killing black boys.
During their teenage years was when I first noticed a change in the way my sons were treated by white police officers. As they grew, which coincided with them leaving the safety of our yard, they sometimes met with friends on the corner where we lived: Policemen told them they couldn’t “congregate” on the corner. The further they strayed into society – high school, the park, the mall – unaccompanied by my husband or me, the more attention they attracted from police. My sons constantly complained that the police officers harassed the black kids, but seemed oblivious to what the white kids said and did. My sons survived; however, potentially life threatening encounters with local police did occur. My sons now have sons.
Black men are men.
Let’s face it. Generally speaking, it’s not black officers or female officers who are killing young black men, it is white policemen. In fact, many black officers working undercover have themselves been killed by fellow white male officers. Something is deadly wrong here; we need to fix this, for all our sakes.
Waiting for Thanksgiving…
I boycotted Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year. I’m waiting for justice.
About Carly Pete: Carly, a 2013 graduate of Salem College, earned B.A. degrees in Communication and Creative Writing. She resides in Winston-Salem, where she works as a communication consultant, lyricist and writer.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
OpEd: Race Relations in the Piedmont Triad ~~ If We Can Laugh Together
By Stephanie Barclay
When I was first offered the chance to write about race relations, I was excited. After all, I have a somewhat unique perspective, being mixed, and a lot to say--in general and about the current state of things. But after trying all night to approach the subject in an analytical, objective manner, what I wrote seemed... well, it didn't ring true enough. So I scrapped all that. I'm going to speak to you from the heart, and you can take out of it what you will, dear reader.
The perception that so many of you white people have about the subjugation, harassment, disenfranchisement and marginalization of the black American ending almost two hundred years ago with the Emancipation Proclamation and that no one alive today having anything to do with it, well it's false. Ask a Southerner in their 60's about the segregated water fountains, lunch counters, swimming pools, hospitals, etc ad nauseum that still existed when the Beatles came to America. It was American apartheid. So "almost two hundred" is really more like 50 years ago... or less. It's been a scant 45 years since the last schools in the country were desegregated, just three years before I was born. 14 years since the state of Alabama struck its (albeit unenforceable since 1967) ban of interracial marriage from its law books, the last state in the US to do so. 34 years since the last known lynching of a black man by the KKK.
And whether or not you were personally responsible for any of this, and many other injustices meted out against black Americans before and since Lincoln freed the slaves, you should at least give black Americans the courtesy of recognizing it's not ancient history, and it's not all in their heads.
At the same time, you black people who look at all white Americans with mistrust, as being part of a system that's keeping you down, are just plain blind. If you're teaching your children to mistrust whitey you're as bad as white Americans who teach their children all the worst stereotypes about people of color. There are many good white Americans and you're alienating them with your attitude. And those of you who look down on getting an education and using proper English at all because you think it's a "white" thing and therefore beneath you, (well you probably can't/won't read this article anyway but...) do you not understand that a proper education and ability to speak, read and write proper English doesn't make you "white", it makes you EDUCATED.
Slaves would be put to death if it was found out they could read or write. I'm sure if any one of them could be brought forward in time, they would be mighty confused, sad and angry that with all the freedoms you do have, you choose to deny yourself that which was denied them by deadly force. Because the powers back then knew an educated slave was a danger to the whole system of slavery. Yet, here you are, willingly treating yourself like a slave, wrapping yourself in shackles of ignorance.
I could go on in this vein but I'm done scolding. What it all boils down to is this: we are all the same species. We all need the same basic things to survive: shelter from the elements, food to eat, medicine to heal us when we're sick, and beneficial relationships with other human beings to sustain and enrich our souls.
The difference in how we achieve these goals, as long as the process doesn't involve criminal activity, is chump change compared to the four basic ways in which we are all alike. This "racial divide" is an artificial construct and it CAN be breached and destroyed, just like the Berlin Wall.
The air these days is full of ugly comments, sprung from the incidents in Ferguson, New York City, and other places, flung from both sides of the "racial divide". This may scare the Bejeezus out of some people, but I think it's a good thing. The subject of race, and racism, has been covered up by so many political and metaphorical band aids that it's become a festering wound. All this recent ugliness in the air is just the buildup of nasty rotten goo releasing itself. And the wound is back open.
Dear reader, we have an opportunity while the band aids are off to do some real cleaning of the wound. Maybe some real bandaging too. We should just go ahead and ask our ignorant questions, because let's face it, ignorance abounds on both sides of our own racial version of the Berlin Wall. And let's answer those questions, with patience and kindness, no harm no foul, laugh together at the most ridiculous ones, and work to fix the painful ones that hit the bullseye.
And if we can laugh together, maybe we can all start to finally see each other as what we truly are: fellow Americans. If we can work together, maybe we can finally heal this festering wound and tear down that wall.
It all starts with you.
About Stephanie Barclay: Born in Upstate New York, Stephanie Barclay has lived in the Piedmont Triad since 1979. From early childhood on, she has always been most in her element when involved in one creative process or another. Today she is an artist/singer/writer, and lives for cheap or free stuff to do.
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