Member-only story
It’s Martin Luther King Day, and He and Others Changed the Nation and This White Girl’s Life
I am forever indebted
I’m a white woman, and was a young white teen when the Civil Rights Movement was at its peak. I grew up in an all-white town.
I know the movement wasn’t for me, but it changed my life anyway.
I learned of the movement through my church. Youth ministers I personally knew marched with Dr. King.
The Disciples of Christ/First Christian Church is a social justice church. Camp counselors and keynote speakers brought the movement and racism to our attention.
King David Cole and Rev. Charles Bayer taught us Black history and the evils of systemic racism.
Charles Bayer started by showing us all the words that have a basis in racism. To this day I say, “white mail” instead of “black mail” and bandaid instead of “flesh-colored bandaid,” as the advertisements called them then. Small changes? Yes, but doing this keeps racism at the forefront of my thinking and speaking.
As they taught us to look at societal racism, they also taught us how to look within for our own embedded racism, and how to root it out. I began this work when I was 14.
