Granny D’s American Century

15 | From the Very Balcony

From the Very Balcony We roared up Louisiana and into Mississippi, stopping at dawn for breakfast and a few loads of laundry. We finally found signs of a Democratic Party: a laundry attendant in Canton could give us a good report on party organizing and registration in the area. We sat in the laundry and waited for our clothes to stop spinning. In the first miles of the trip we would each run our own loads. Then, maybe somewhere in Miami, it was a ladies’ load and a gents’ load. Now, to save quarters and because we were pretty much family, a mixed load was acceptable. Waiting in launderettes and elsewhere, I liked to read advance copies of books from Jim Hightower and Molly Ivins, who never fail to make me laugh. Blue would have her music in her earphones and would be reading something more spiritual or mythological. Dennis would be emailing people ahead. We had a date in Memphis with the Hip Hop Summit Voter Project, which was backed by a big rap promoter, Russell Simmons. Also, I had been invited as the main speaker for the thirty-fifth commemoration of Dr. King’s death in Memphis. I would speak from the Lorraine Motel balcony where he was killed. The idea did not seem real to me. It was too much of an honor. I didn’t know if I could do it without breaking down. We hit the blues joints on Beale Street within minutes of our arrival in Memphis. The next day we registered voters in the housing projects along Vance Boulevard. The children of the projects, like those in so many other places, were mesmerized by Tim the Alligator and by Rosie generally. I expect Tim had been petted now by a few hundred kids, each saying at least “Whoa!” as they did so, and some carrying on great conversations: “What you doin’ to my finger, Tim? You gonna eat my finger, Tim? Looks like you been eatin’ bugs, Tim. You like them bugs? You gotta brush your teeth, Tim.” The day arrived. We went to the Lorraine Motel, now called the National Civil Rights Museum. The courtyard was filled with hundreds 15 From the Very Balcony 141 of people, many in their teens and nearly all African American by descent. “My God, I’m I going to speak from there?” I looked up at the place where King was shot, a wreath on the railing to mark the spot. “That’s sacred; I don’t know if I can do it.” Dennis reminded me I had spoken from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the u.s. Capitol, and had not lost my composure. Reverend Lennox Yearwood Jr. and a young man helped me up the stairway. I looked out at the crowd, over to the wreath, then across the way to the fire department headquarters where the shooter may have stood and done so much harm to us all. The crowd grew still and quiet. The words came very naturally to me in that moment: Before many of you were born, but only yesterday evening to me, a shot rang out through this air, among these buildings, that rocked our culture, advanced a wave of despair and violence, ended a great life, interrupted the effort to end the injustice of poverty in America . The years have passed. The violence is now different, but it is still here. The despair is different, but it saturates us and sometimes immobilizes us. The great moral imperative of ending poverty in America seems far away, for many in power now do everything they can to widen, not narrow, the gap between rich and poor. The people began to respond with “that’s right” and “yes.” The dark forces that brought death to this doorstep—America’s doorstep—and that ended the lives of our other great leaders, are still with us, doing what they do to keep us from being the masters of our own government, of our own futures, keeping us from making our government and our society clear reflections and instruments of our own highest values. We live now in a commercialized culture that tries every day and in a thousand ways to assassinate our moral sensibilities. But we are strong, and even my old eyes can still see injustice clearly, and even my old heart can feel the presence and guidance of the great soul who was transformed, but hardly killed, on this...