"Okay muchachos, ¿Qué es el Libro de Guinness? Who can explain what the Guinness Book of World Records is?"
"It is a book of beer." a small blond girl offered, definitively.
"The local people have long believed the monarchs are the returning spirits of their diseased relatives....." Lily read aloud for the class.
"Deceased." I quickly corrected, as she continued reading, unfazed.
"I wanted to check in on Tim's behavior. We doubled down on his ADHD medicine. I'm sure you've seen a difference!"
"I can't breathe.....I can't breathe....I CAN'T BREATHE....." Eric Garner's guttural pleas filled my car as I drove over the railroad tracks and to the Center to tutor. The gray sky seemed to darken and grip the earth stronger.
"So broken windows is predicated on the idea that if you break a window in a neighborhood, soon, all the other windows in the neighborhood will be broken. So you have to work hard to keep those windows from being broken, so that means cracking down on small offenses. So don't let people jump turnstiles. Don't let people ride their bicycles the wrong way down a sidewalk. Don't let people smoke weed in public. Don't let people urinate in public."
I turned right on Howard.
"And of course, this only happens in certain neighborhoods and doesn't happen in other neighborhoods."
"...police in cities like New York were stopping 500,000, 600,000, 700,000 people a year almost entirely in black and Hispanic neighborhoods and very often physically searching them as well...it's traumatizing....".
I made my left into the apartments.
"...there is a thing called a roadside cavity search...."
"Please just leave me alone...." he pleaded, his breathing labored.
"The kids were asking about the Civil Rights Movement. They think it happened a long time ago..."
"Whaaa?" a few of the other Center teachers gasped.
"I was there!" one of them exclaimed.
"Me too!" another seconded.
"I thought we'd watch 'The Watsons Go to Birmingham' today."
"ALL of them will watch it."
I watched the Watsons carefully plan their drive from Flint, Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama. The last rest area they could safely stop at. How early they would leave Michigan in order to drive through the south in daylight. When Byron runs excitedly to a lunch counter to order hot dogs and fries for the family and is addressed as 'boy' and told to leave. The look of excitement quickly falling from his face, disgust, anger and confusion replacing it. The four little girls singing in the church choir.
"What is their problem? Why do they have such a chip on their shoulder? Why don't they just get over it?" rang in my ears, a lifetime of 'questions' in white voices.
George Wallace's face appeared on the screen.
"Segregation now....."
"Segregation tomorrow....."
"Segregation forever....." the teachers said in unison with the archival Wallace footage.
It was burned in their memories. It always will be.
*Interview excerpts, NPR, Matt Taibbi
Again, I weep at the memories of visiting the South in 1961, a white girl from Michigan. I was unprepared to have black adult men step into the gutter to let me pass on the sidewalk. I couldn't believe my aunt accepted the rule that black people didn't come to a white front door: they went to the back door. I came from an industrial town and, being poor, lived on the side of the river that was integrated. I had never seen overt discrimination. I had experienced it because of familial circumstances but never because of my color. My eyes were opened wide that summer of 1961.
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