Would I Have Marched?

Growing up as just one of many Caucasian little girls in a nearly all-white private school it was easy to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement and automatically assume I would have marched.

It was no question that I would have fought for what was right. Things are so black and white when we’re little, and I see it repeated now when my daughter exclaimed at dinner “but of COURSE white and black people should have the same rights!” She’s much like her mother at that age, little prosecutor in the making. That’s what I wanted to be at her age when I grew up.

Then I heard my parents say things like “she’s going to be a damn Liberal”- I didn’t know what it meant, but clearly it was bad.

Middle and High School came, and the lessons about MLK trolled on. First in private school, then in public- when I was first really around those who didn’t look like me. We became friends and I learned that those who didn’t look like me many times were better friends than those that did. And then I took a second look at my skin, and realized it was not as lily-white as I had always assumed. My own heritage became muddied, and I realized there was more to me.

College brought about political activism, the kind that my parents had raised me in, complete with an internship with the senior Republican Senator of my state at that time. I learned about constituency work, and where the real hard politics are taken care of, on the front lines. And I worked on various campaigns, experiencing the thrill of it all. Still, I assumed that had I been called to March- that of course I would. My party was the party of Lincoln, and I rolled my eyes at those who might argue otherwise.

It would be as an adult I would realize my great-grandmother worked for george Wallace. It was cool that she worked in politics when most women wouldn’t dream of it. But she worked for the man who I had always assumed was evil, and she worshipped him. Still I would think, it would be hard- but I would stand up for others. It’s so clear that what was happening in the 60s was wrong.

I would go back to college after my divorce, when so many things became so much more clear. I read Letters From a Birmingham Jail and realized with horror that I had always been the white moderate that MLK spoke of, I was the one causing the most harm. I was doing exactly what I always assumed I would never do. It was a life changing moment.