MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1957
Lordy, Lordy! Would you look at that! The world is turnin’ and I’m livin’ to see it!” Mrs. Patterson exclaimed as she came into the house from work. She slammed a copy of the current issue of Time magazine on the kitchen table and then, very unlike the mother Sylvia was used to, she danced around the table. The cover of the magazine was decorated with a full-face picture of Martin Luther King, Jr.—in color.
Sylvia didn’t know which was more surprising—Mama showing off like that, or the fact that the very proper, very white Time magazine had decided to put Dr. King on the cover! Sylvia picked up the magazine and studied it closely. She decided that Dr. King was a good-looking man, a little like the man of her dreams.
“I wonder why they have him looking away from the camera, Mama,” Sylvia wondered out loud.
Her mother looked at the photo closely. “He looks like something in the distance is making him angry, and he fully intends to make it right just as soon as the photographers are done with him! Umph! I love a powerful man!”
Sylvia gazed at her mother in astonishment. “I’ve never heard you talk like this, Mama.”
Her mother flicked her hand as if to dismiss the thought. She was peering at the photo again. “You know, he didn’t seem to be the least concerned with who was taking his picture, or even that he was about to make history by being on the cover of this magazine.” She continued to marvel.
“I guess he had important things on his mind,” Sylvia said.
The picture showed a man with a full face, strong cheek-bones, and a large nose. He did not smile.
“I bet this man would really enjoy chomping down on a pork chop or a buttermilk biscuit,” Mrs. Patterson said, smoothing the cover with her hands and smiling like she’d found a new recipe.
He wore a gray suit, a crisp white shirt that Sylvia figured his wife took great care in ironing, and a stunning red tie. Her father always wore a dumpy blue suit and a blue spotted tie. She loved her daddy, but Sylvia had never seen him look as bold and powerful as Martin Luther King did in this picture.
“Why is a bus in the picture, Mama?” Sylvia asked.
“I suppose because of his success with the boycott in Montgomery,” her mother replied.
Sylvia pointed to the photo. “And look how they put a pulpit in the background, showing Dr. King preaching, which I guess is his other job when he isn’t out changing the world.”
“You know what, Sylvie?” her mother mused.
“What, Mama?”
“I think this is a picture that will make white people very uncomfortable.” Mother and daughter exchanged glances of understanding.
Sylvia promised herself that the next day after school she would take twenty cents of her lunch money and buy her own copy of the magazine. A man like that was worth it.
Tuesday, March 19, 1957
Maybe folks here in this country should just start over, like they are doing in Africa. In this week’s Life magazine, I read about a new country that’s just getting started—Ghana. I don’t know much about Africa, but I learned so much when I did my report that now I’m trying to read books to learn more. Each of those little squares we see on the map of Africa is about the size of some of our states, but each one is a separate country, with different languages, ruling systems, money, and customs. Most Americans tend to think of Africa as one big mysterious country, but it’s made up of dozens of individual fascinating places.
It’s cool to think about the birth of a country. I wonder how they decide the rules and the rulers. It’s probably a lot like the birth of a real baby. After the initial happiness, they get grumpy with morning sickness, like Mama was before Donna Jean was born. I wonder if Negro women who are about to have babies this year in Little Rock are worried about bringing another child into this world of confusion.
I noticed that Martin Luther King had been invited to the celebration for Ghana. There was a little tiny picture of him at the bottom of the page. The magazine referred to him as simply “an Alabama bus boycotter.”