Sunday, January 15, 2017

Papoose / Martin Luther King's Birthday 2017 / Alberta Williams King / Dream Variations / Women's March 2017















Around 4 a.m., I awoke, and the word "papoose" came to me, along with a surprising sensation of being loved, cared for, and protected, no matter what danger threatens.  I went back to sleep.  When I woke up again, I realized that today is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Just now I found this:

"Also, little known is that in the 1963 March on Washington there was a sizable Native American contingent, including many from South Dakota. Moreover, the civil rights movement inspired the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders. In fact, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was patterned after the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund."

and this where Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote about his mother, Alberta Williams King.

"My mother confronted the age-old problem of the Negro parent in America: how to explain discrimination and segregation to a small child. She taught me that I should feel a sense of "somebodiness" but that on the other hand I had to go out and face a system that stared me in the face every day saying you are "less than," you are "not equal to." She told me about slavery and how it ended with the Civil War. She tried to explain the divided system of the South—the segregated schools, restaurants, theaters, housing; the white and colored signs on drinking fountains, waiting rooms, lavatories—as a social condition rather than a natural order. She made it clear that she opposed this system and that I must never allow it to make me feel inferior. Then she said the words that almost every Negro hears before he can yet understand the injustice that makes them necessary: "You are as good as anyone." At this time Mother had no idea that the little boy in her arms would years later be involved in a struggle against the system she was speaking of."
"Nothing lights a fire like a dream deferred."
Papoose.  A child.  Something lovingly made, in which a child is kept safe.  All children.  All people.  Loved, cared for, and protected.  We carry the dream as if it were a beloved child. 


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