I Am MLK Jr., Too

I'll be watching the documentary, “I Am MLK Jr.," airing on April 4th on Black Entertainment Television, to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of American Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reflecting back on my own journey, I'm overwhelmed by memories, astonished by the path I've followed so far.

I can't say that I clearly remember April 4th, 1968, because I was only 6 years old at the time. But without having seen the documentary, I can state unequivocally that I am MLK Jr., too. That’s because my life is the embodiment of the dream he espoused.

50 years ago, if you had asked a little rusty-kneed, pig-tailed six-year-old black girl named Rachel if she would ever get to fly in an airplane, she might have thought it impossible. She was the 9th of 10 children born into working-class poverty in Cairo, Illinois, and there were too many days when the prospect of the next decent meal seemed just as tenuous as a seat on a jet plane.

That same little girl used to clutch a hairbrush like a microphone to practice mimicking newscasters like Walter Cronkite by saying, “Rachel Jones, CBS News, Washington.” Without any evidence that she would ever even be allowed to enter a newsroom, no less become a journalist with access to a nationwide audience.

50 years later, I have mentored young African journalists while living in a Northern Ugandan village, and I have dipped my toes in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Durban, South Africa.

I have floated in Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, and I have lounged on the beach at Phuket.

I have helped chop greens for supper in a wooden shack in Addis Ababa, and I have climbed down steep stone stairs at the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap.

And I spent nine years working as a reporter at a national media company where I could say, “Rachel Jones, NPR News, Washington” as a part of my job.

I have done all of these things primarily because of two people: Eloise Blocker Jones and Julie Ann Marie Jones Newell, my mother and eldest sister. They were two of the cussed-est women who ever walked the face of this Earth. Their brilliance, eloquence and fierce determination literally fuel each beat of my heart.

And I can’t give short shrift to Lewis Jones, a stony silent, impassive man who worked every single day of his life to feed and house 10 children. He couldn’t give me love or words of praise because he never got them himself. But he helped give me life, and he gave me grit.

There was another man I never met, but whose life and death 50 years ago infused me with the electric current that invigorated each step on my path and expanded every corner of my mind.

His name was Martin Luther King, Jr., and he gave his life to illuminate mine and millions of others.

I Am MLK Jr. because MLK Jr. willingly became the lightning rod to absorb all the shocks, all the vitriol, all the hatred that America could belch up--and is still spewing, sadly. He believed that a rusty-kneed, pig-tailed black girl born in poverty in the Land of the Free deserved the chance to be free, in every sense of the word.

I Am MLK Jr. because MLK Jr. wasn’t perfect, was profoundly human, and made plenty of mistakes. But whatever criticism might be lodged against him, MLK Jr. believed that the price of the ticket on this planet was the obligation to recognize the humanity in every other human on this planet.

I Am MLK Jr. because I have been spat on, called a nigger, denied access, had a dog sicced on me, been sneered at and dismissed, undermined and railroaded at various points my lifetime. I have been told that because I was a woman, and a black woman to boot, that I didn’t deserve to have what I had, to work where I’d been hired, to speak unless given permission.

I Am MLK Jr. because I have had to turn the other cheek countless times, square my shoulders, smile when I wanted to sob, laugh when fear laced my blood with horror. I chose a profession, journalism, and I made a life and a career out of it. I've covered a Ku Klux Klan rally, and had white hooded men curse me so fiercely that their spittle landed on my face. I once drove the dark backroads of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, trying to find the home of the widow of civil rights martyr Vernon Dahmer, and had a pick-up truck with a confederate flag in the window pull up right behind me. I thought I was going to die that night.

But I am MLK Jr. because I rose to every occasion. I withstood every sling and arrow, returned to the job every day, passed almost every test, survived every storm. I remembered my mother’s words: “Don’t mind if they say you got the job because you're black, as long as you keep it because you're good.”

Oh, I am good, Mama. I am smart. I am strong.

Just like Celie from "The Color Purple," I am still here.

A bullet stopped MLK Jr.’s heart. But bullets have no brains. They can’t understand that once you have planted a seed in a mind or a heart, once you have yanked off the grotesque mask of prejudice and fear, once you have shown a little rusty-kneed, pig-tailed six-year-old black girl that she has every right to fly, that she has brain that she must use, that there is a whole world out there that she can explore, there are a few things you must acknowledge.

You can’t kill passion.

You can’t erase the truth.

You can’t destroy dignity.

And when a person is free in his or her mind, you can't enslave them with hate, bullets, knives or ropes or jail cells. They are invincible.

MLK Jr. gifted me and millions of other brown-skinned people in the Land of the Free with the dream of psychological and spiritual freedom, in a country that sought to deny us that freedom at every turn. When MLK Jr. talked about his dream, it made me believe that my dreams of a day when I would not always be hungry or struggling, and not always be afraid that someone would reject me or deny me because of my skin color.

My major dream during my childhood was that I would see the world.

I have seen the world, and the world has seen me.

I have claimed my voice, my spirit, my passion.

I Am MLK Jr.