I look to the rear of our bus. A blanket stretches across two seat backs. There are children underneath and children coming and going. What stories are they inventing?
The kids are making the best of a 10-hour ride to Memphis. We are three generations of pilgrims in search of Civil Rights history. As the days proceed, I will follow the little ones to see what it all means to them.
Hope
In Memphis, a curly-topped girl at our feet is hugging her knees in front of a burned-out church while the tour guide describes the day when she watched flames consume its history. The little girl fingers the concrete, outlining some creation from her imagination. To her the guide is saying, “Blah, blah, blah . . .”
To the adults, our guide, Anasa Troutman, embodies hope. Her foundation, The Big We, faced that arson tragedy last year after renovating historic Clayborn Temple. Now she spearheads the work to forge its next new life from the ashes. The temple will become a center for community and cultural development. Hope flourishes.
Persistence
In a downtown park, the children scramble up the backside of a monument. It is a symbolic representation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Mountaintop Speech on the night before he was shot:
“I’ve been to the mountaintop and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I might not get there with you, but . . . we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”
Made of iron and smoothed by many previous children, the monument invites them to climb up, fail to make it all the way, then slide down, only to try again. One teen boy finally makes it to the top.
A kindergartener scooches up part way. After a few tries, with a combination of working his arms and being pushed by bigger children, he nears the top. His dad moves in and takes him the last few inches. Once on top, the boy looks out with alarm; a mountaintop is scary. Good that his dad is there to ease him down.
I admire the youthful persistence on that statue. A slew of contenders scrambled, over and over, but only two made it to the top. It was a communal victory, and the whole group cheered.
Imagination
A cluster of children sits down in a recess inside the Civil Rights Museum. A tableau of statues, diagrams and maps describe the transatlantic slave ships. One boy, about 12 or 14, has taken it upon himself to educate the others. He rocks from foot to foot as he tells them, “You didn’t have a bed. No bathroom on the ship. . . and . . . and to eat . . . like . . . nothing to eat.” A dad stands at the edge of the tableau. Unwiped tears well in his eyes.
Take-away
Everyone on our trip is White. We want to know the fullness of the history missing from our school books. The children are absorbing as much as their imaginations are ready for. Meanwhile, they are modeling for us the value of imagination, persistence and communal problem solving. These, I think, echo Martin Luther King’s message. No wonder people like Anasa Troutman face tragedy with undying hope. They believe in our children and in Dr. King’s words.
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