[Ohio-talk] Here We Are 50 Years Later

[Cheryl Fischer]

Thank you to Barbara and JW for what you've written. I'm so glad to have
friends who are old enough to really remember and interested in sharing
their thoughts and experiences.
 
Cheryl

-----Original Message-----
From: Ohio-talk [mailto:ohio-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Smith, JW
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2013 1:29 PM
To: NFB of Ohio Announcement and Discussion List (ohio-talk at nfbnet.org)
Subject: [Ohio-talk] Here We Are 50 Years Later

So here we are 50 years later and we have much to be thankful for in terms
of diversity and inclusion in our society. As many of you may or may not
know one of my areas of research is Black communication styles and the
development of Black rhetoric in our culture. This is such a historic day
for us so please allow me some meanderings. On August 28th, 1963, Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. had prepared a four or five minute speech as he was the last
in a long line of speakers that day. Did you know, that his now famous "I
Have a Dream" part of the speech was not even in his prepared notes and in
fact he had delivered a similar speech in Detroit earlier that year? It was
probably at the urging of the famous gospel singer Mahalia Jackson as she
sat on the stage behind him that he even included the phrase. At one point,
she was overheard to say "tell them about the dream, Martin" and if you look
at the video it is at that time that he puts down his prepared notes and
adlibs the last ten minutes of his speech, which by the way ended up being
16 minutes in length. Did you also know that immediately after his speech
someone asked him for his notes and he gave them to him and he still has
those notes? People have offered him between 3 and 4 million dollars for
them but he refuses to sell them. Did you also know that the famous activist
W.E.B. Dubois symbolically passed away on August 27th, 1963 seemingly to
pass the torch onto Dr. King and others?

                Even though I was only 4 years old at the time I remember
vividly what it was like and what it meant to be a Black blind person coming
up in the city of Chicago. So I will get off of my soapbox soon but I want
to reiterate as I said in my last message- in my opinion, I know we've come
a long way as a people and a society and not just with the election of
President Obama. You see I remember what it was like for us to take our
trips by car from Chicago to Memphis, Tennessee and have to have community
picnics on the side of the road because our formal lodging options were
limited at best, as well as possibilities for filling our automobile with
gasoline. I remember the whispered hush hushes of my family members in
Greenville, Mississippi "you know how they are and we really need to be
careful and stay away from over there and you all are from the North and you
don't really know what it's like down here, so be careful." It was common
knowledge in Chicago in the 1960's that if you were not a Caucasian there
were several neighborhoods that you dare not visit after say 8 o'clock
because there could be serious implications for that misjudgment. It is
ironic to me today that one of my favorite hotels is located in one of those
areas and its probably why I try to stay there as often as I can when I
visit my hometown of Chicago.  I will close my meanderings with what I tell
my students when we have finished discussing the impact of slavery on our
society. I say to them there are three responses that are often communicated
about this tragic period in our country. The first is "I didn't do it, I
wasn't there so don't hold me responsible or make me feel guilty about any
of that stuff that happened way back then." The second is "Your all guilty,
you all owe us and we will never let you forget it." The third one and the
one I like the best and is by far the one that I try to live up to is "it
happened, lets learn from it and never repeat it and let's try and do what
we can to move on." As you celebrate and commemorate this historic day think
about what you can do to ensure that 50 years from now we have made even
more progress and in more parts of our society.

Thanks for listening, I'm going to shut up now.

Jw

Dr. JW Smith
Associate Professor
Interim Director of Honors Tutorial Studies School of Communication Studies
Lasher Hall, Rm. 112 Athens, OH 45701
smithj at ohio.edu<mailto:smithj at ohio.edu>
T: 740-593-4838
F: 740-593-4810

*Ask me about the newly revised Ohio Fellows Program or visit
http://www.ohio.edu/univcollege/ohiofellows.cfm

"Regarding the past, change what you can, and can what you can't."
"Our minds are like parachutes. They work best when they are open."

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