MLK Day

Not too long ago, they tore down the last remnants of my old junior high school. Towsontown Junior High existed for over 50 years, and it was turned into the George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology, a fine magnet school for the central section of Baltimore County.  High school students there prepare for work or advanced studies in one of ten fields.

The school originally opened in the building used by the old junior high, a building which itself was made partly of the old Carver High School, a racially-segregated institution back in the days when society found it necessary to have black students attend one school and whites, another. There was also a newer southern wing.  All sections of the old building have now been replaced with modern facilities.

There's also a building in East Towson which was the elementary school for the area's African-American children back in the day. Prior to the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, (1954), the law allowed for this foolishness.

I bring this up to remind one and all that if not for civil rights pioneers such as the Brown family, the participants in the famous marches in Selma and other places, the brave students who integrated Little Rock Central High School and had to be escorted to class by the National Guard, and those whose lives were lost in the battle to have us all regarded as equal in the eyes of men and women all across the nation, we would not have emerged from those sad, low times.

The holiday today celebrates the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose nonviolent approach of civil disobedience helped us make what progress we've had.

It would be good for all of us to spend some time thinking of how far we have come, and how far we have yet to travel on this journey to equality.

"We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now."    Dr. King