AUGUST 28, 1963: PAINFUL, CHILDISH THINGS

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." 1 Corinthians 13:11

August 28, 1963. Half way between graduation and assassination. People were marching in Washington, D.C., proclaiming their civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would give a famous speech that day. I wished I could be there to hear it. My feelings were there, my heart was there, my mind was there. I watched it all on television. But I would have been there if I could. The truth is that I wasn't brave enough to grow up enough to be there. I was only a couple of months out of high school; JFK had less than three more months to live. I was not ready to put away the childish things that included all of the stuff accumulated during a white southern boyhood in North Carolina. I was several years away from becoming a man. But I could pretend, couldn't I? And I would do a lot of damage during that time searching for a box large and strong enough to hold the misery and mess of my youth long enough for me to get away.

I knew that's what it would take. I already knew it in August 1963 as I watched all those people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial listening to Dr. King speak. I wanted all their dreams to come true. I really did. I understood it all. Every word, every thought, every demand, every longing and need. I felt it. I knew it. I understood it intimately because I was dreaming my private dream of the day when I could shout/sing/scream/whisper/mutter, "Free at last. Free at last." We were all trapped together and it might take chewing our own legs off to escape. That is what I really understood. And that the chewing would be long and painful.

I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school and still too afraid of pain to do much to help myself or anybody else. So I spent the summer of 1963 clinging to childish things, but August 28 loosened my grip.