Happy Birthday Martin Luther King!

My Grandson does not have school today because it is Martin Luther King's birthday so, he is spending the day with me. It's way to cold to be outside (5 degrees...I don't want to know what the wind chill factor is!) so we are having an indoors day with some cartoons, finishing a chapter book and making some chicken noodle soup.

I had just finished reading an article about Martin Luther King's crusade for the Civil Rights Movement and glanced up to a photo on my desk.

 It's an old, faded photo of a young Asian woman with her young daughter taken in the 1950's. During that time, this young woman was struggling with life in an unfamiliar country without any family other than her little daughter and had been deserted by her husband.

I remembered a little story she once told me about the time when she was still pregnant with her daughter and living in Michigan. She decided to go and visit a friend that was living in Missouri and had to take a bus to get there. Language was a tremendous barrier for her but she immediately noticed that people of "color" were seated in the back of the bus and "white" people were seated in the front of the bus. She just stood there because she didn't know where she should sit.

She finally managed to ask the bus driver where she should sit. The bus driver scratched his head and she realized that he had no idea where to seat her either. Finally, he reached out and pulled down a small jump seat right next to him and indicated that she should sit there. What a bus trip that must have been!

I found the story fascinating because it tells of a time when such humiliating practices were "normal" and wondered how strange it must have been for her to try to understand this while trying to find a way to adapt to such strange customs in a even stranger country. Then again, that time in this country seems so surreal to me. Thank goodness for people like Martin Luther King.

Happy Birthday Dr King!

Mai