Once in awhile if he’s lucky, a man gets to stand on the edge of something big.
photo credit: davidscameracraft.blogspot.com
It was just after 10:00 on Saturday night. I took the number 2 from Midtown and got off early at Fulton. A little walking does a man’s heart good. As I came closer to the park I could feel the siren call of the drums. Hundreds of voices, all shouting, singing and debating forming a single harmony. Smoke from the crowd twisted and climbed in slow motion circles, dimming the sharp glare of the sodium lights overhead. I made my way over to the bench I’d been frequenting for the past month, there was a space there for me to sit. It was a bit out of the way but it still afforded me a view of the park and it was close enough to be a part of the action.
I may be an old man now, but I’m not so old I can’t see the winds of change blowing. I hear the critics and the fearful doing their public best to tear down and discredit the free will of these people. I see a media siding with the Bankers and the CEOs who sign their paychecks, while in a distant part of their brain they’re hearing what could be the beginnings of a new order. I always tell ‘em two things if they ask, “lead with your heart and never confuse the power of money with the power of the people.”
As I sat on that bench and let the energy and passions of the people flow through me, I closed my eyes and drifted to another time; a world far removed from this little park in lower Manhattan.
I was 18 years old that February morning when those four boys walked in through the front door of the F. W. Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. It was 1960 and a black man wasn’t welcome. Behind the counter old Frank stared at them with the fear in his eyes. Being a coloured man and all, he understood the rules that dictated what a black man could and couldn’t do. I never really understood it myself, but in a town like Greensboro you learned to keep your opinions to yourself when they didn’t figure with the majority.
They walked in just as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be doing. Dressed in their Sunday best with their shoes polished and their hair all fussed up, they took a seat at the counter and ordered cups of coffee. Frank warned them off and told them to stop actin’ the fools. They asked again, polite and respectful yet firm. Their heads levelled and their eyes set with determination.
The manager came over and asked them all to leave. Told them, “this here’s a white only establishment and they best be getting on before trouble starts.” The tallest one of the four, Franklin I think his name was comes right back and says “We ain’t going nowhere ’til we get served. .” You coulda’ heard a pin drop in that room. Some of the men started grumbling and threatenin’ them boys but they were not to be detoured. They came back the next day and kept coming back: just sitting there waiting for someone see them as equals, to pour them a cup of coffee.
They called it a sit-in. A demonstration the likes of this small town had never seen before. It took time and it took courage. Soon enough though more people joined on; black folks only at first but then some white ones to. It spread: first to Kressy’s lunch counter on the far side of town. From there it went Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte. Soon enough it was in Virginia, Tennessee and then the whole country. F. W. Woolworth changed their policies that year and along with them, every other establishment in the country bowed to the will of those four boys. Their courage and determination changed the way people saw things.
I swore to myself right then I’d not stand by idle in this life. I would speak up, say my piece, and keep my convictions. If you could have seen those four boys you’d know what I mean. They made me both proud and ashamed. Proud they made their stand on a day I was there to witness; ashamed to be as white as the folks who made the rules that turned a man’s colour on himself.
A shout rings out from the crowd bringing me back to the present; another city has joined the movement, another connection made for the cause. The tweets start to fly, messages are showing up on wall posts all across the world. This again is a turning’ point, and this old man just might see lightning strike twice!
-Billy
This week’s Indie Ink Challenge came from the talented bewildered bug, she gave me this prompt: Yearn.
I challenged the Pirate Queen herself, Grace O’Malley at The Grace of Pirates with the prompt: Selling the dream cheap.
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