MY MOTHER'S KING

Remembering her and the civil rights giant

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This piece was originally penned on this date in 2023. It is impossible to overstate how important Dr. Martin Luther King was to my mother, and how important they both were to me. Their indomitable spirit lives inside me. They are my North Star. I will never be defeated as long as their memory burns bright inside my heart. As Dr King put it: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” -D. E. Stephens)

---

I have been knocking around the house this morning wondering what I can say about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that is fresh and worthy of a giant.

I’ve decided it’s best if my mother, Kay, helps me tell it.

Kay was a proud liberal, and she was always prepared to tell you all about that.

When the word “liberal” was somehow painted in a dark light by the white men who controlled the opposition party in the 60s and 70s, and certainly since her death, her green eyes would flash hurt and fury, and out of her mouth would come this:

“When the hell did being a liberal become a bad thing??? It’s a good thing! I’m PROUD to be a liberal, dammit! Being a liberal is a good thing in this house, got it? The only thing.”

There was no backdown in her, not one bit. She was a tall, strong woman who’d been through a lot, but always got right back up when life knocked her down.

All men and women were created equal in those fiery, green eyes, and if you weren’t buying that, she didn’t care, because she wasn’t wasting time selling undeniable truth to people who bet on hate.

Truth is truth.

I remember my mother’s green eyes the morning after Dr. King was killed. I was a sandy-haired, brown-eyed lad grabbing for a lunch bag. I knew of King. My mother’s watery eyes told me I could never know enough about this great man.

A part of my mom died that day with Dr. King. I’m sure of it. The hurt was too deep. The loss too enormous. She could never process it properly. Nobody with a heart her size could.

I slowly shuffled off to school that day sad that there were evil forces in this world capable of doing such terrible things that they could make my strong and mighty mother hurt so much.

Our house was a quiet place for a few days, before we pulled ourselves together enough to go march for this man.

This was Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1968. We were one of those predominately black cities in the northeastern part of the state that was in the eye of the civil rights storm. There were fires, and riots, and beatings, and school closings and lots of hurt, anger and despair back then.

It was a dangerous place, only because too many people in my city felt like they had nothing to lose except for their dignity.

You come after a person’s dignity, you better bring more than just fire hoses …

But today we would march. All of us. Black men, and white men. Mothers and fathers. Daughters and sons.

A King had died.

We met at the Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, a menacing, high-steepled structure that reached for the sky, and gathered us in.

There were hundreds and hundreds of people — brokenhearted … defiant. Religious … non-religious.

We prayed.

When we exited the church, the bells started ringing, and we held hands. All of us. We started walking slowly through the wounded town.

Together.

We sang:

“We shall overcome; We shall overcome …

We shall overcome … someday;

Deep in my heart, I do believe …

we shall over come someday.”

We sang loudly, from our hearts and to the heavens.

That song … that moment … lives inside me, and I am singing loudly today:

“We shall overcome …”

“We shall overcome … someday …”

So you ask what Dr. King meant to me and my mom?

Everything.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

(That’s a picture of Kay many years ago, after the struggles in the ‘60s, and long before today’s fresh horrors could be imagined. The racist felon in our White House would have broken her proud, liberal heart, but she no doubt would have found inspiration in Dr. King, as we all should, to overcome this evil madness.)