Today, on MLK Day, the Forward republished this from a few years ago. https://forward.com/news/182763/the-jews-who-marched-on-washington-with-martin-lut/
I was 16 years old in August 1963, living in Silver Spring, just outside Washington DC. Some of my older friends were going downtown for the March. My mother, reading about Neo-Nazi threats to disrupt the March (threats that never materialized) and remembering violence she witnessed from the Right during demonstrations she attended in NYC aathe 1930s, ordered me not to go. Being a “good boy,” I obeyed. To my everlasting regret. (Five years later, I was a student volunteer on the Poor People’s Campaign, and the next year I began working as a VISTA Volunteer in Memphis.)
Many decades later, I related that story at a family gathering. My mom responded that she assumed I went anyway. I loved my mom, but I was more annoyed with her than with myself. On reflection, maybe I should have been more annoyed with myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment