Why I Will March

In 1960, I was six years old. My Mother, a Southern woman, and a devout Catholic was 53 years old. I was the only, and most adored, child. Rosemary firmly believed she had been misplaced from her beloved Crystal Springs, Mississippi, to the Northern state of Michigan, to run her Father’s lumber yard. The annual trek by train from Chicago to New Orleans on the City of New Orleans, the same one made famous by Bob Dylan in 1971, was a memory I shall never forget. She lived for the South and somewhere in her mind, thought surely it would rise again.

Rosemary was the fastest typist in the Governor of Michigan’s typing pool and rose to the top of that department. Her strength and conviction in the man’s world of business in the 1950’s and 1960’s was groundbreaking. She made a hell of a cherry pie too. Made one the day I was born and even though she was in labor, she waited until the pie was out of the oven before going to the hospital.

She was a remarkable woman for so many reasons.

Yet….

My mother was a racist until the day she died at ninety-nine. The first time I knew something was terribly wrong was when I was six. We disembarked from that long train ride south and I skipped to the nearest water fountain for a drink. Then I heard the screech, CAAARRROOOLLL! That sound could stop a vulture mid-air on its way to grab a tasty squirrel. It certainly stopped me. Yet it was too late.

I had already sipped from the font. The sign above read COLORED ONLY.

Now, I was raised in Michigan and we didn’t have such signs. The south was rampant with racism in the 60’s, and my Mother fit right in. Nigra’s, as she called black people, wasn’t softened even with the lilt of a Southern drawl. I hadn’t seen this side of her and I didn’t know what to think, except I knew something was VERY wrong with her.

When she turned her back to me to tell the Nigra porter to take our things to the awaiting car, I took another long drink.

Now you might say I had a defiant streak.

When I was in high school in South Texas, I heard from my Hispanic friends about a group called the Brown Berets coming to town with the newly formed La Raza Unida. They were marching to call attention to the plight of the Chicano, in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King yet more vocal and confrontational. They were tired of not having a voice in politics and these young University leaders were going to create a movement to be heard. They spoke of a young man, Cesar Chavez, who would be marching as well.

I walked with them, in my maxi coat, mini dress and platform heels. It was exhilarating to be part of a movement that would have major repercussions in the decades to follow.

We also staged walkouts in high school, mostly about the dress code. We walked and were suspended for the day.

An activist in the making.

As a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, I had my first taste, smell, and feel of tear gas; marching again, this time against the Viet Nam war as we marched on Guadalupe, the main drag, and in eyesight of my dorm, Dobie Hall, the first co-ed dorm on campus. I felt so liberal, liberated and proud to call attention to what I believed.
So now, I will voice my utter disgust with our current President-elect by marching again- this time in January in Washington, D.C. alongside women and men who also believe and care for minorities of all shades and persuasions-women, Muslims, transgender/LGBTQ friends, people with disabilities, undocumented people and communities of color.

I will voice my disgust with the President Elect. This is a man who has promoted violence, admires tyrants, and does not believe in equity of the law; a bigot, and misogynist.

I will not stand down!

And I will march in memory of my mother. She was raised in the South in the early 1900’s. Her family had the upstairs maid, the laundress, the cook, and driver. It was a time, and that time is in the past. We cannot go back. The American people should not want to go back!

Though fear racks our democracy, there have been a couple of good things that have come from this pitiful excuse of an election.

1) I have the cleanest bathrooms ever! On Wednesday, the day after the debacle, I couldn’t think. Now when I say clean, I mean with toothbrush and Q-tips until the point of ridiculous collapse.

2) The American public is learning the meaning of words associated with President-Elect like Misogyny, Islamophobia, xenophobia, megalomania and bigotry.

I would say that my well-seasoned defiant streak has been lit on fire, again!

I’m with Gloria Steinem.
He’s not MY President.

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