It seems that I have been operating on the edge of hysteria since this first began. I am overreacting to everything. I feel like I cannot respond exuberantly to any emotional thing or I will slip off and become hysterical. This afternoon, we went out to eat lunch and coming back, I started laughing and then I started crying and it was awful because I couldn’t stop it. I don’t know what’s happening. Dorie just contacted a very old woman who knew Featherstone to tell her about the memorial service and Dorie was saying, “Yes, ma’am,” and, “No, ma’am,” and it sounded so nice. She wouldn’t have ever said it to anybody here, so it was really nice and funny to hear her talking like that to an old lady. I teased her about it a little and she just grinned and said “that is my training.” The other day we were looking through some materials and we found an old SNCC agenda for some important meeting or another. It was all about bad things happening and what they were going to do about it, but at the bottom, somebody had written an order for lunch: “chicken and potatoes and some sweet potato pie,” it said. It was written in pencil and it was just weird to see it and realize that the folks doing all that dangerous Movement work in places like Neshoba and Philadelphia, Mississippi, were still having to eat and sleep and order lunch and go to the bathroom.
Working here, I am surrounded by the Movement. In the materials we are collecting and in the voices of the people who work here. Most of them are longtime activists and organizers. I listen to the stories they tell and I am in awe of their determination and their courage. They all know Daddy and respect him. I actually think he is part of the reason why I got this job. We’re charged with gathering archival materials documenting freedom struggles all over the country. They would love to have Daddy’s papers here. I think it’s great that Mrs. King started this huge project so soon after Dr. King died. I wonder if they knew what a radical Vincent Harding was when they asked him to run it!
She has been very nice to me the couple of times I’ve met her. She looks exactly like her pictures. I wanted to tell her I think the name of the place is unwieldy: The Martin Luther King, Jr., Library and Documentation Project. But then somebody told me they had thought about making it even longer: The Martin Luther King, Jr., Library and Documentation Project and Center for Non-Violent Social Change, so I figured I would let well enough alone.
I wonder: where is Rap?