A few days ago a friend and I were talking about the approaching watershed day of Barack Obama’s inauguration.  With no illusions whatever about the abiding racism in this country, she commented that we’d nevertheless come a long way.  There weren’t many of us who witnessed the Arkansas National Guard facing down school children, to prevent school integration in Little Rock, who would have imagined we would see an African American president in our lifetime.

The thought of the Little Rock incident touched on another memory, one closer to home, in Charlotte, NC.  It’s one that my dad, Kays Gary, wrote about in 1957, the first time a black child attended a previously all-white school in Charlotte.  Here’s what Dad wrote about Dorothy Counts, offered here as food for thought on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day:

Dorothy Counts

A head needs no face for expression.

The way it is carried upon the neck tells all.

If it is too high it shows defiance.

If it is too low and twists from side to side with a forward thrust of the neck it is full of shame.

Between these extremes is the posture of dignity and confidence, and a certain blend of humility and pride.

And that is the way she held her head.

They spat and she was covered with it.

Spittle dripped from the hem of her dress.

It clung to her neck and her arms and she wore it.

They spat and they jeered and screamed.

A boy tumbled out of the crowd and hit her in the back with his fist.

Debris fell on her shoulders and around her feet.

And the posture of the head was unchanged.

That was the remarkable thing.

And if her skin was brown you had to admit that her courage was royal purple.

For how many of us could have taken that walk to and from a school?

Originally published September 5, 1957, in The Charlotte Observer, and copied here with permission.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen