Reflections on a long Sunday

After attending an uplifting church service, we went to the Little Rock Nine Central High School Museum, met the courageous Dr. Sybil Hampton, and then from there drove to Memphis to see the National Civil Rights Museum. We ended the day on the boisterous, beautiful Beale Street. It was a busy day, and each place exposed us to a different aspect of the movement. I found that every new location evoked a new emotion in me.

The most memorable moments for me were experienced in the two museums. In the Little Rock Museum, I felt extreme sadness while observing an exhibit on Emmett Till, the fourteen year old boy who had been murdered by two white store owners while traveling down south. At the top of the exhibit, a picture of Till and his mother smiling was featured. He looked like a kid I might have known today. Underneath was a picture of his mother weeping hysterically as her son's coffin arrived. These two images really broke my heart. I am not a mother, so I couldn't even begin imagine how terrible the pain of losing a child must have been.

In the Civil Rights Museum, I experienced two similar emotions. While standing on the balcony where MLK was assassinated, I felt extreme discomfort. Looking into his motel room, untouched since his untimely death, I felt a particular emptiness, like something invaluable had been stolen. In the museum, I watched on a screen a clip of one mother talking about teenagers who had gone down south to help with voting registration for black people. "They weren't expecting a bed of roses" I recall her saying. "But they also didn't expect to be killed." Once again I was heartbroken.

Seeing and hearing the voices of those who have experienced incredible loss in their lives, and being on the balcony where the world lost a great man, all at once I felt an intense hatred. Who was so evil that they would murder someone's child? Who was so evil that they would take the life of a man who wanted nothing but good for the world? I was disgusted. I wanted the pain Till's mother felt to be inflicted on her son's killers, and everyone else in the world like them.

But in that moment, I remembered what Dr. Sybil had told us. One of the only black students in the Central High school in Little Rock, she was harassed and shunned every day. When asked about whether or not she forgave her peers, she replied saying that she forgave from day one. That forgiveness had been crucial to ensuring her inner peace at that time.

I ended the day pondering. Did I have the strength to forgive?

JNC