The third Monday of January is a day when we usually revisit the scenes of seminal events in the long, often bloody struggle for human equality in America: a bus boycott in Alabama, a boy’s lynching in Mississippi, the murderous attacks on Freedom Riders in the Deep South, the children being cursed and spat on as they were conducted into all-White public schools under court order. Today we’d like to bring remembrance closer to home, to the city and the counties in and around D.C., a region that is something more than the focus for the national government; it is also a cluster of communities in constant flux: growing, generally prospering, open to change and progress.
But a good many people who live here, mostly of a certain advanced age, can still honestly say: “I grew up in the segregated South,” by which they mean places such as Fairfax and Arlington counties, Alexandria, Prince George’s, even Montgomery County. It wasn’t Alabama, but at times it might have seemed a bit like it to Black people.
Sometimes it was a matter of law, as in Virginia, where many school systems remained segregated long after the Supreme Court in 1954 outlawed such practices (even D.C.’s public schools did not desegregate until the court handed down that decision), and where Black passengers might have to move to the back of a bus when it crossed into Virginia.
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End of carouselAlso on the Editorial Board’s agenda
- The Taliban has doubled down on the repression of women.
- The world’s ice is melting quickly.
- Turkey’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is at it again.
- Hong Kong’s crackdown on free speech continues.
Afghanistan’s rulers had promised that barring women from universities was only temporary. But private universities got a letter on Jan. 28 warning them that women are prohibited from taking university entrance examinations. Afghanistan has 140 private universities across 24 provinces, with around 200,000 students. Out of those, some 60,000 to 70,000 are women, the AP reports. Read a recent editorial on women’s rights in Afghanistan.
A new study finds that half the world’s mountain glaciers and ice caps will melt even if global warming is restrained to 1.5 degrees Celsius — which it won’t be. This would feed sea-level rise and imperil water sources for hundreds of millions. Read a recent editorial on how to cope with rising seas, and another on the policies needed to fight climate change.
A court in mid-December sentenced Istanbul’s popular mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, a political rival of the president, to more than two years in prison on the charge of “insulting public figures.” If confirmed on appeal, his conviction would bar Mr. Imamoglu from seeking public office. Mr. Erdogan has a long history of suppressing critics and competition. Read our recent editorial.
A Hong Kong judge sentenced Jimmy Lai, a media magnate known for publishing a defiantly independent newspaper, to almost six years in prison. His trial for violating Hong Kong’s repressive national security law, charges for which he could face life in prison, has been postponed until next year. Read our most recent editorial on the case.
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But so much of the code of conduct that ruled daily life for Black and White was not spoken or written. It was simply understood, a matter of custom, immutable and silently threatening for those who transgressed. It was the day-after-day repetition of little insults that slowly crushed the spirit and the sense of a common humanity. At the motor vehicles bureau, a White woman might be addressed by the clerk as “Mrs. Smith,” the Black woman behind her in line as “Mabel.” A Black construction worker on one of the projects in Washington’s growing suburbs would often have to stand at the end of the lunch counter and get his food on takeout, to be eaten wherever he could find a place.
It’s not as if there weren’t many people of good heart and good intention who wished to do away with this petty tyranny of one race over another. In 1939, the great operatic contralto Marian Anderson was denied permission to perform in this city’s Constitution Hall because of her race. A couple of prominent Washingtonians named Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt arranged for her to sing instead from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where an interracial audience of thousands saw one of the most moving events in local history. But a greater one was to come on that same stage. In 1963, the 100th year since the Emancipation Proclamation, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was to lead a mass demonstration for civil rights at the memorial. There was considerable nervousness in Washington-area communities, and many people chose to stay home from work. But instead of a disturbance, there ensued a joyful throng of thousands, Black and White, who once again gathered around the reflecting pool before the statue of Abraham Lincoln for an afternoon of song and speeches.
In The Post’s newsroom, a few television sets were rounded up for editors and reporters to monitor the proceedings as they went about their work — noisily, as usual. But as Mr. King spoke, toward the end of the program, a lot of the newsroom noise trailed off and people stopped to listen to the words as he began to hit the high notes — “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,” and finished with the lines from a Black spiritual: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”
The heavens didn’t open on that afternoon; there was much sadness and turmoil in the years to come, along with startling progress. But the reverend doctor had preached a sermon for the ages — words that helped bring hope and change to the country and to this community of ours, where he found his bully pulpit.