My Parents Had a Dream…
My parents were both raised in South Africa, but they were never comfortable living under apartheid. They moved to Boston in 1962 with three children and a dream of living in a democratic society where equality and opportunity were a given.
Then, six short years after their arrival in the United States, Martin Luther King, Jr. — the heart and soul of America’s Civil Rights movement — was assassinated. My parents were shocked and saddened by the violent murder of this man who had insisted on peaceful demonstration. They also felt a deep sense of disappointment at the reality of life in the U.S. and the cruel irony of having left behind everything they owned in South Africa to emigrate to a country where true racial equality had not been achieved. Dr. King’s assassination forced them to acknowledge that here, too, there were people who had much in common with the supporters of apartheid in South Africa. It was the end of their innocence and a devastating awakening.
I sometimes wonder what life would be like today if their vision of America had been accurate. We certainly would not have had Ferguson and Baltimore and Charleston; we would not need a movement to remind us that black lives matter.
In those darkest of moments, when I find myself grasping for hope, I try to remember all the progress we have made. Slavery came to an end. Women were granted the vote. The politics of fear and intimidation were outlawed and African Americans were at last able to vote, not only in theory but in the real world. Our grandchildren will ask, was there really a time when gay people had to hide their identity? When they were not allowed to marry? The fact that we needed these changes seems today like a prehistoric nightmare.
Apartheid in South Africa has gone now, too, thanks to another powerful black leader, Nelson Mandela. Mandela and King shared the same vision, the same devotion to peace, the same electric personality, the same capacity to inspire. In both countries, much has changed, but still, much remains to be done.
Race, culture, ethnicity, religion and economic inequity continue to divide us, but in the long view, we have come a great distance. We look forward to a time when we can all live in communities where human diversity is prized, where we recognize that it makes us all richer, and where we can all rejoice in peace.