The struggle never ended
by Tom Sullivan
Ernest Green, member of the “Little Rock Nine” addresses 38th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast, Asheville, NC.
Those of us of a certain age, but not quite old enough, were too young to attend the 1963 March on Washington. The march and Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech influenced our era, our views, and changed the country. There are times one wishes, if only I could have been there for that moment in history. Then again, such thinking fixes the civil rights movement in time. The truth is, that struggle never ended.
Saturday morning, Ernest Green, one of the “Little Rock Nine” spoke to Asheville’s 38th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast. He retold the story of how in 1958 he and several classmates integrated Central High School escorted by 101st Airborne Division troops.
“Over 60 years ago, we arrived in the back of an army wagon at Central High School,” Green said. “I don’t think any of us thought we’d still be talking about high school 60 years later.”
They were just looking for a better education and a chance at upward mobility.
King, who followed the Little Rock effort, was little known at the time. Green said he paid King little mind because, well, King was an adult and he was 16. But King was there when Green graduated, with anti-sniper teams overlooking the football field, helicopters flying overhead, dogs sniffing for bombs, and Green’s classmates not wanting to stand too close to him.
King quoted an old hymn to Green in the car on their way, saying God wouldn’t bring you this far to leave you now.
That struggle against white supremacy never ended.
The web was flooded yesterday with images of teenage red caps taunting a native American elder on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, feet from where Martin Luther King delivered his historic speech.
Nathan Phillips, reportedly a Vietnam War veteran and Omaha tribe elder, was singing and drumming there as part of Friday’s Indigenous Peoples March. The swarm of teenagers from the all-male Covington Catholic High School were in town from Kentucky for the March for Life.
Phillips told the Washington Post a few people from the March for Life crowd began chanting, “Build that wall, build that wall,” and Phillips felt he needed to leave:
“It was getting ugly, and I was thinking: ‘I’ve got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,’ ” Phillips recalled. “I started going that way, and that guy in the hat stood in my way and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat.”
The white teenager stood silently, smirking, inches away from Phillips’ face as others in an assortment of “Make America Great Again” caps and shirts mocked him and his friends.
The scene reminded The Atlantic‘s James Fallows last night of the scenes from Little Rock’s Central High School Green had recalled hours before:
The young men from Covington Catholic High School should know that they will be immortalized, the way the angry young white people you see below were: as a group, a movement, a problem, beyond their identities as individuals.
If one of the priests or teachers with the Covington group today had stepped in to stop them—if even one of the students had said, “Come on, back off!”—that person would be remembered, too. But there is no sign that anyone, student or teacher or parent or priest, did.
Black students integrating Little Rock Central High School, 1957.(AP)
Others saw the parallels to white resistance to black men sitting at lunch counters:
pic.twitter.com/sdufJXxBcv— james tuskes (@jtuskes) January 19, 2019
I honestly haven't stopped thinking about that MAGA kid all day – in part because I think so many of us have been on the receiving end of the face he was making: a smug, untouchable, entitled 'fuck you'.— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 19, 2019
The prevalent red caps and Trump gear among the teens was no accident, as Slate’s Ruth Graham observed:
The context is key to the clash’s virality, too. It took place just days after President Trump made light of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee to mock Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom he often refers to by the racist nickname “Pocahontas.” More broadly, it takes place in an era in which chanting the president’s name has become a tool of racial intimidation.
The mayor of Covington issued a statement condemning the students’ behavior. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School issued their own statement. It read, in part, “This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person. The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.”
But the damage is done. The struggle continues. History is still being made.
Women were again marching in the streets this weekend for the third straight year, claiming equality and respect too-long denied them by easily threatened men accustomed to being unchallenged and untouchable.