Ride Freedom, Ride.

In what's left of amerika (spoiler alert: not much) today is a Federal Holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King. It took about thirty years for all 50 states to honor the man, because, you know, he was Black and how dare he.

I'd wager that very few people have any inkling what amerika was like not so long ago. And what King protested against and helped to start to change. My guess is that we're much closer to celebrating the "I Have a Dream Mattress Sale," than we are to thinking about the evil and the horrors of amerika's racist foundations and hegemony. But, in the spirit of "a three-day-weekend" with buy-one-get-one sales, all will be right. 

In just a couple of weeks, brands will festoon their logos with meaningless design changes and we will as a nay-shun celebrate Black History Month. But no one knows any history because it's somehow politically charged to tell the truth and therefore refractory to those we're telling the truth on.

All this brings me to the obituary that precipitated this post, on what otherwise might have been a day off for my over-worked typing fingers. I read this obituary when it came out, a little over a week ago. And, while I consider myself aware of much of the Civil Rights war that's been waged in the country since before it was a country, I didn't know of Charles Person. You can read the entire Times' obituary here. 

Person was just 18 and student at Morehouse College when he joined the Freedom Riders. He had been accepted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology but couldn't afford to attend. Georgia, the state he paid taxes to, wouldn't allow him admission to Georgia Tech (a public college) because of his race. 

The Freedom Riders left Washington DC in 1961 aiming to test the Supreme Court's decision banning segregation in bus terminals that served interstate riders.

Person was paired with James Peck, a white rider. Their job was stupid and almost suicidal. They would enter bus terminals. Person would try to use the "white restroom," and Peck the "Black restroom." Then they would try to order food that the lunch counters designated to the race opposite theirs.

Here's a bit to ponder from Person's obituary.

And here (because if you care, you can find these things out) is a bit of actual reporting from the New York Times from May 15, 1961. 

You can read more of the Times' reporting here.

It's hard not to worry now about amerika. It's also hard not to feel powerless against the consolidated might of the well-oiled and well-monied plutocratic forces arrayed against old-fashioned values like treating others as you'd like to be treated.

Maybe all we can do is find out what our world is really like. What's happened in the past. And how we got to where we are today. Maybe that's how we can keep the dream alive of a fairer kinder world against the forces that want all the money, all the power and who want you a slave.

That's what I'm doing. Looking into things. Holding onto my values. 

Etiam si omnes, ego non.  Even if all others, not I.

Or if you prefer rhymes and German, "Ich Nicht." Translation below.

On Martin Luther King Day. And every day.