A day to be on, and be our best

SOUL FOOD

Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day to honor the man and

his legacy.

For many, it was a day they described as “a day on, not a day

off.” They gathered in public places to remember King, to remember

his principles of freedom and justice, peace and nonviolence, and to

remember his dream of a nation where all people will be judged not

“by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

It was a day to seek ways to make his dream -- which is in many

ways still a dream -- more a reality.

A few weeks ago, not long after watching the fairly current and

controversial film “Barbershop,” my husband, Michael, and I stumbled

on the 15-year old film “Mississippi Burning” and watched it for the

first time on cable TV.

“Mississippi Burning” tells the story of the murders of three

civil rights workers -- two white men and one black man -- in Neshoba

County in 1964 and the murder investigation that followed them. It’s

quite a hard movie to watch.

And it’s a bad movie in many ways. It takes great liberties with

the facts of its story and pawns off as justice acts of terror and

violence that rival those of the real-life murders it depicts.

The murders took place the same year Martin Luther King received

the Nobel Peace Prize, but “Mississippi Burning” pays little homage

to the nonviolent ideology that girded and guided his civil rights

movement and won him the prize.

I was born in the South, as those of you who have read this column

for some time know. And for many of my childhood years, I was raised

there.

It was a segregated world then, and children whose skin was black

instead of white, like mine, couldn’t go to school with me.

They couldn’t live in the same neighborhood. They couldn’t eat at

the same lunch counter or even drink from the same public water

fountain on a hot Southern day.

Segregation was in the South of that time as ordinary as oleo on

cornbread.

It was a place and time so committed to segregation that George

Wallace ran for governor of Alabama, and took that seat in 1963, on

the boast of “Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation

forever!”

Years later, in an interview with Carl T. Rowan, Wallace would say

that he had to stand up for segregation or be defeated, that his

statement merely “reflected my vehemence, my belligerence, against

the federal court system that seemed to be taking over everything in

the South.”

Whatever it reflected, the end of segregation was a long, hard and

-- for King and the three young men in Neshoba County and others like

them -- a costly time coming.

These days, often as not, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is just

another day off, or not even a day off as simply another day.

In a place and time that has given us a movie like “Barbershop,”

it seems a shame.

“Barbershop” is funny. It is. But when it lampoons civil rights

legend and hero Rosa Parks, and civil rights martyr King, it goes too

far -- wittingly or unwittingly I don’t know -- and offends.

Or it offends those of us who are old enough to remember and

respect the boldness of King’s vision, and the unprovoked courage he

and others brought to the dangers of that time. Two generations in

this nation, now, are too young to remember.

When I watch a movie like “Barbershop,” I wonder what, if

anything, about segregation and the civil rights movement of the ‘50s

and ‘60s anyone is teaching them.

There’s a line in “Mississippi Burning” that’s particularly hard

for me to forget. Gene Hackman, as FBI agent Anderson tells another

agent what his Mississippi daddy always said: “If you can’t be better

than a [Negro], who can you be better than?”

King was a preacher. He knew scripture and he stood on its solid

ground. He knew very well that God does not play favorites according

to skin color, race, gender or wealth. And he stood on the truth.

“God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created

him; male and female He created them,” it says in the first chapter

of Genesis.

In this country, with its own Declaration of Independence that

claims, “All men are created equal,” King stood on the truth. Even in

dangerous times, he stood.

“It’s always the right time to do the right thing,” King said.

And as much as he could, with God’s help, he did.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].