Hope Captured in Pictures

Black History Month: February 14 – Dr. Martin Luther King

Dr. King and Coretta Scott King with their first born baby, Yolanda in 1956

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INVOCATION

O Spirit, we open our gated hearts. Welcome, come through.

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STORY

In many of his speeches and in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King told the story of an amusement park in Atlanta called Funtown and how it impacted him as a father raising Black children in a segregated (apartheid/caste) country:

My little daughter loves to ride to the airport with me. She so often says to me, “Daddy you just go over and over and over again.” And so one of the ways she consoles herself and the fact that her daddy has to be away so much is to ride to the airport whenever I’m going in or coming back into town or going out of town, and she can do it if she isn’t in school. 

As we pass on the expressway going to the airport in Atlanta, we pass by what is known as Funtown. Now, this is an amusement center where little children go to play and where they go for recreation – something like Disneyland and something like the very fine amusement centers across the country for people. As we pass Funtown so often in the car, she would look over to me and say, “Daddy I want to go to Funtown!” 

Well, I could always evade the question when we were going by in the automobile because we were passing by, and I could jump to another subject. I didn’t want to have to tell my little daughter that she couldn’t go to Funtown because of the color of her skin. 

But then the other day we were at home, and like most children, she likes to look at television. She was looking at television and they were advertising Funtown, and she ran downstairs and said, “Daddy, you know I’ve been telling you I wanna go to Funtown and they were just talking about Funtown on the television and I want you to take me to Funtown.” 

I stood there speechless. How could I explain to a little six-year-old girl that she couldn’t go to Funtown because she was colored? I’d been speaking across the country talking about segregation and discrimination – and I thought I could answer most of the questions that came up but I was speechless for the moment. I didn’t know how to explain it. 

Then I said to myself: I’ve got to face to problem once and for all. 

My wife was sitting on the other side of the table, and I took my little daughter and told her to have a seat on my knees. She jumped up in my lap and I looked at her and said, “Yolanda, we have a problem.” I said, “You know some people don’t do the right things and they are misguided. And so they have developed a system where white people go certain places and colored people go certain places. And I said, “They have Funtown like that so that they don’t allow colored children to go to Funtown.” 

Then I looked at her at that point because I didn’t want her to develop a sense of bitterness. I didn’t want her to grow up with a sense of hatred and bitterness in her heart. And so I had to rush on and say, “But now, all white people are not like this. There are some white people in Atlanta who would like for you to go to Funtown and there are some all over the country who are right on this issue. Still there are those who have been misguided.”

I looked down into her eyes at that point and I saw tears flowing from her eyes, and I said, “Yoki, even though you can’t go to Funtown, I want you to know that you are as good as anybody who goes into Funtown. And I want you to know, Yoki, that some of us are working hard every day to get Funtown open and to get many other places open – and in the not-too-distant future, Funtown—and every other town—will be open to all of God’s children because we’re going to work for it.”

Sometimes our hope is ignited by the desires of the next generation. Hope brings justice and leaves a legacy. 

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LITANY 

God who welcomes all to enter,
God who welcomes all to rest, 
God who welcomes all to rejoice, 
God who welcomes all to partake,
God who welcomes everyone everywhere, 
Open your gates of justice, mercy, love and freedom. 

Amen.