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My grandmother can tell you about walking to the Kansas State University campus daily from her host family’s home miles away to attend class because she wasn’t allowed to live in the dorms.
My father can tell you of watching movies from a theater balcony because it was illegal for him to sit on the main floor.
My mother can tell you of being kept from enjoying Omaha’s only amusement park as a teenager because it was designated as whites only.
It was only one generation ago when the civil rights movement struck a crippling blow against the devilish pact among business, education and other societal institutions that legally and systematically aimed to dehumanize this country’s black citizens.
Just one generation ago.
Since the civil rights movement legacy is in many ways still a toddler, the vestiges of yesteryear’s sins continue to be sprinkled throughout people’s experiences today.
That’s why some of us, hailing from a glorious hodgepodge of racial and ethnic backgrounds, still participate with great vigor in local and national celebrations such as the recent honoring of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
There are those who have lived through the horrific past of Jim Crow and others who are keenly aware of the tenuous liberties of the present – and many in both groups are convinced that it’s too soon to act as if today’s freedoms always have been this way.
Meanwhile, there are some who are visibly dumbfounded as to why groups of us insist that these celebratory rituals such as King’s holiday must retain attention.
Please, let me help you.
A 91-year-old Sioux Falls woman who’s a friend of mine can tell you about a time when blacks could eat at only two restaurants in Sioux Falls.
My 50ish pastor, who grew up in New York, can tell you of visiting Sioux Falls as a girl with her preacher-father and staying with a host family because they weren’t allowed to sleep in hotels here.
And as long as there are other people alive who also can recall firsthand these kinds of tragic moments that symbolize how low it’s possible even for our cherished Sioux Falls – aided by our businesses – to fall, then it’s too soon to let certain milestones pass unheralded.
Maybe it’s my fear that lessons quickly forgotten can too soon become lessons forced to repeat, but I tend to think that our self-congratulations of how far we’ve come in race relations must be tempered by the reality that our gains are relatively recent.
In my lifetime, I’ve always patronized businesses of my own choosing. I’ve always sat in restaurants and buses where it pleased me. I’ve slept in hotel rooms without it being any big deal at all.
But I’m only 40.
I’m part of the first generation of black folks born in a United States of America that’s absent of Jim Crow laws in our nation’s businesses and institutions.
Because of the reality, some of us in Sioux Falls, whether by gift or choice, had the day off on Jan. 21 from our managing and planning and various labors to honor the world-changing contributions of a man named Martin Luther King Jr.
Then on Jan. 22, we went back to work.
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