Martin Luther King Jr.'s Passing

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. took place when I was only 9 years old. Surprisingly, of all my years in public school, 1968 stands out the clearest. The death of Dr. King was followed by Robert Kennedy's assassination two months later in June.

This year marked the beginning of the most chaotic period in my life, mirrored in the news with the Vietnam War, Detroit riots, being bussed into inner-city schools for the school desegregation programs, and social upheaval all over the country. I don't think anyone realized that Dr. King's death was the hallmark of troubled times. But he certainly was immortalized on that fateful day in early April of 1968.

There's no way to sugar coat the truth: My dad and many of my relatives were racists. I grew up in the eastern suburbs of Detroit and never even met a black person until I was about 11 years old and bussed into an inner-city school in Jackson, Michigan.

If there's a negative word for a minority, my dad used it in our home. Even as a child, I never understood his disdain for blacks. Today, the politically-correct term is African-American. But when I grew up it was black. If you used the "N" word or Negro, it was an insult.

For the purposes of my essay, I'm going to stick to the now politically incorrect word "black." Just remember that it was the accepted term of that era.

In any case, I never understood or agreed with my dad's anger toward minorities. I'll have to give him one thing, he "dissed" EVERYONE. It wasn't spaghetti sauce for my dad, it was "Dago Sauce." Jewish folks were "Hebes" and "Kikes." The guy made me cringe with his slurs.

To this day, I blame him for the fact that when someone says the "N" word, I get nauseous. Maybe that's a good thing, after all. Funny thing was, my dad was nearly half "Native American," and resented it when people called him "Chief" or "that damned Indian." I never understood why my dad used racial slurs if he resented them being used against himself. So you can imagine what he thought of Martin Luther King.