I had seen her at the downtown office a couple of times before I had the chance to speak to her. Her name was Mrs. Montgomery and she lived in Macon for over sixty years. Her petite, emaciated, eighty-six-year-old frame and slow ramble did not prevent her from making the more than two-mile commute to our downtown office to help register voters a couple times a week.
Mrs. Montgomery would take the bus from her home in East Macon--a poor, all-black area that rests beside a landfill--to Terminal Station, where the words "Colored Waiting Room" painfully line the aged face of the building. What for me was a twenty-five minute walk from the station to the office, for Mrs. Montgomery became an arduous ninety-minute journey. Three times a week however, she would make this commute, oftentimes arriving at the office sweat-soaked from having been kissed by the oppressive Georgia sun.
On this particular afternoon, my heart nearly broke when I opened the office door and saw Mrs. Montgomery standing before me, perspiring and yet unflinching, wearing spectacles and a denim hat. She clutched her purse to her chest as she entered the air-conditioned building and took a seat beside me. "Can I get you something to drink?" I offered. "I'll take a Coca-Cola," she replied. I went to the kitchen and reached as far back into the mini-fridge as I could. The can was so cold that it stuck to my palm. "Mrs. Montgomery," I began, "I know that you'd like to go out and register voters, but would you mind if I kept you here today to make phone calls? It's over ninety-five degrees outside." I watched with satisfaction as she sipped her coke. "Naw, I don' mind baby," she replied. "You jus' tell me what I gots to do and I'll do it." I placed a stack of phone numbers on the desk in front of her. "Now all you have to do is ask these individuals two questions," I explained, "'do you support Senator Obama?' and 'would you like to volunteer?' On the sheet next to the person's name 'NH' means 'not home,' 'BZ' means 'busy,' 'RF' means 'refused,' and 'CB' means 'call back.'" "I done this befo' baby so you ain't got to worry 'bout nuthin" she said, looking up at me from underneath her hat.
Encountering Mrs. Montgomery became a source of considerable consternation. Her dedication reminded me of the apathy of my own generation. She caused me to think seriously about what has happened to make so many of us calloused towards the pain and the suffering of others. I often worry about what will happen as the generation of Mamie Till Mobleys, Coretta Scott Kings, Rosa Parks, and Mrs. Montgomerys is no longer around. Frederick Douglass said of racism and injustice, "It has been called a great many names and it will call itself by yet another name; and you and I and all of us will wait and see what new form this monster will assume and in what new skin this old snake will come forth." I sometimes wonder...who will continue to fight in a struggle that has certainly become more nuanced, but that remains a struggle nonetheless?
1 comment:
I can totally hear Mrs. Montgomery's accent! it makes me smile.
In response to the Frederick Douglass quote, I know this to be true, and you are certainly right that the struggle is more nuanced (as most things are becoming in our modern age), but I can't help but feel like there is an imminent, global and systemic change that will relegate racism and injustice from ubiquitous realities to the absurd aberrations they should be. I hope that this holistic change happens sooner rather than later and I hope that Obama is the keystone of that bridge to change. But even if my Marxist prophesy is wrong, I am still really excited to contribute in any and every way to this struggle that needs attention from people like us in every cultural niche. I know I am not alone in this last sentiment, and again excuse the lack of factual evidence, but I feel our generation is eager to create this most ambitious movement to vanquish injustice.
I have no problem calling this "our" struggle because it is obvious to me that we share the same bottom-up approach in a top-down world. I feel like bottom-up is necessarily honest, whereas top-down is necessarily manipulative? Does that make sense or am I pulling that out of my rump? The only thing I know is that I could rant a lot about that...
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