Red and yellow, black and white

My tutor looked away from the math problem to the sidewalk outside.

I squinted, watching boys and girls walking hand in hand.

White children were walking next to black children.

The tutor made it clear that she did not approve of whites and blacks walking together.

Mom had arranged for her, a retired school teacher, whom I will call Mrs. “B,” to help with my math studies, for that was a subject my six-week report card indicated needed some attention.

That’s when Mom contacted Mrs. B. She was probably in her mid 60s, but she seemed older than the ancient of days to my third grade mind. Mrs. B. was kind enough, at least she didn’t rap my knuckles when I made a mistake, and that was a good thing, for my missteps in math were many. Sadly, though rumors of miracles with her other students abounded, Mrs. B’s efforts to improve my math skills were largely wasted.

But I learned something from Mrs. B that would stay with me forever, even if it was one of those life lessons that come to us in a back-handed, negative way.

The lesson had to do with those kids we saw walking down the sidewalk in front of her house that day.

“It’s wrong,” she said firmly and forcefully, pointing to the presence of black children with white children, “and God doesn’t approve,” she said.

Right and wrong was as clear to Mr. B as the correct summation of addition or multiplication, subtraction or division. It was right there, like the checks for a correct answer or a red “x,” for an incorrect one.

But looking at the smiling faces on those kids, I couldn’t help but think Mrs. B’s estimate of the facts didn’t quite add up, at least not in my mind.

It certainly didn’t correlate with what we sang only a few blocks down the road from her house on Sunday morning at the First Baptist Church where I had learned to sing, “Red and yellow, Black and white/They’re all precious in his sight/Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

Did he love all the children the same or were some children favored because of their skin color? Did he love them as long as they stayed grouped together, color by color, with some colors innately more privileged than others?

But what puzzled me the most was an even deeper issue, at least to me: What was it that caused an intelligent person to think God frowned on black and white children walking together?

I pondered.

Many years later some of those questions would lead me to write a doctoral dissertation that at least in part addressed the issues that Mrs. B and other well-meaning people had raised in my mind.

Otherwise good people, motivated by fear, can seek to restrict other good people from enjoying the freedoms both have a right to claim.

Fear causes rational people, many whose ancestors immigrated to this great country, to deny all other immigrants the same opportunity to love and work in this country.

It causes one group of people to look down upon or away from another group of people, thereby permitting injustices to them simply because they are “different.”

This Sunday, I will join others---red and yellow black and white---in honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his now famous, “I have a Dream,” speech, Dr. King said something we all need to remember: We are on this journey together, and in light of the multifarious threats to our freedoms both within and outside our borders, it is imperative that we stay together.

Or all of us could lose the freedoms we hold so dear.

In reference to many of his “white brothers,” who were present the day King gave that speech, he said that they “have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

“We cannot walk alone,” King said near the end of his speech. “And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.”

It’s still true today.

So, thank you, Mrs. B.: I learned from you that even good, well-meaning teachers can have flaws and prejudices, and those very flaws and prejudices can teach us that when we are afraid, we can---just like those children you pointed to on the sidewalk were doing so long ago---lock arms and hands, sometimes even with those whom we fear the most, and walk the road together.

We cannot turn back.

Not now.

Not ever.