Sideline Safety

Martin Luther King Jr. stepped out of the car that had ferried him to Marquette Park on Chicago's Southwest Side to lead a march of about 700 people. The civil-rights leader and his supporters were in the white ethnic enclave to protest housing segregation. Thousands of jeering, taunting whites had gathered. The mood was ominous. One placard read: "King would look good with a knife in his back."
As King marched, someone hurled a stone. It struck King on the head. Stunned, he fell to one knee. He stayed on the ground for several seconds. As he rose, aides and bodyguards surrounded him to protect him from the rocks, bottles and firecrackers that rained down on the demonstrators. King was one of 30 people who were injured; the disturbance resulted in 40 arrests. He later explained why he put himself at risk: "I have to do this--to expose myself--to bring this hate into the open." He had done that before, but Chicago was different. "I have seen many demonstrations in the South, but I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today," he said. Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1966.
I had finished my sophomore year in college and was working as a groundskeeper for a couple of Mexican-American migrant workers, Tony and Modesto Cardoza.  King’s activism did not play well in conversations in my parents’ home. King was a rabble-rouser, who should go back “down south”.

"Down South” was Birmingham Alabama, where two weeks after Easter 1963, King is in the City Jail for continuing to lead nonviolent protests against racial inequality. The appropriately named Police Chief “Bull” Connor is on a rampage. Wikipedia reports: When Connor realized that the Birmingham jail was full, on May 3 he changed police tactics to keep protesters out of the downtown business area. Another thousand students gathered at the church and left to walk across Kelly Ingram Park while chanting, "We're going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom ... freedom ... freedom." As the demonstrators left the church, police warned them to stop and turn back, "or you'll get wet". When they continued, Connor ordered the city's fire hoses, set at a level that would peel bark off a tree or separate bricks from mortar, to be turned on the children. Boys' shirts were ripped off, and young women were pushed over the tops of cars by the force of the water. When the students crouched or fell, the blasts of water rolled them down the asphalt streets and concrete sidewalks. Connor allowed white spectators to push forward, shouting, "Let those people come forward, sergeant. I want 'em to see the dogs work."

In those three years of King’s activity, I had remained safe on the sidelines. In the summer of 1967, I had decided to work in Detroit rather than returning to my parents’ suburban Chicago home, and the action on the field spilled over the sidelines. Fires burned all over Detroit, the center of the riot just three miles from campus. We watched the smoke from fires burning just blocks away. Nearby black merchants spray painted “Soul Brother” on the windows of their shops, to keep looters away. Somehow I felt safe. Perhaps it was my whiteness. Bull Connor’s dogs and fire hoses attacked students my age with black skin. But I know too that I felt safe because I knew that I was good. My heart was kind. I never hurt Aanybody. I was, in the parlance of the time, “a lover and not a fighter.”

So here I am in this Good Story. (click for a link) Jesus is in jail. People are milling around, standing near fires to stay warm in the darkness. Somebody says, “Hey, didn’t I see you with Him?”

“Me?” I say my voice too loud, too high. “I was just watching.” 
...Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
(from "The Gift Outright" by Robert Frost, courtesy of Bill, and The Writers' Almanac)

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.