...She was a wife and a mother. A home maker who gave love, wisdom, and discipline. Each when necessary and all when needed. She was the rock, the cornerstone of her family. Her husband was the head. He was the provider and protector. He worked everyday to make sure his family was fed, clothed, and warm. He also had another aim. An aim to improve the future for his children. He knew that being black in southern, rural Mississippi was not going to provide the best of opportunities for his progeny, so he sought to change that.
She knew what he was doing was risky, but she also knew that what he was doing was right. He wanted his people to take control of their circumstances. He wanted them to shape their own destinies. And he wanted them to do that in the simplest and simultaneously riskiest ways. He wanted them to do what they were legally bound to do but were socially restrained from doing. He wanted them to vote. In an age where being literate was enough to bring bodily harm, attempting to insert your "nigger" influence in the white man's institution was suicide. He could not read when they met. She taught him how to sign his name. But it doesn't take a well read man to know when wrong is being perpetrated and when change is paramount.
He was the only person of color with a car and it was with that humble medium that he would escort NAACP members around the county bringing change one house at a time. Most were hesitant, some were embracing. None of them were resistant enough to make him quit. Often times, word travels faster than works and word soon got out of about his works. He was warned to stop his agitating. He refused to heed. He would keep on with his work. She would keep on with her praying for his safety and her family's protection. She never stopped nurturing, providing, loving her family. There is a quote that says that if a man does not have something he would die for then he is not fit to live. Herbert Lee died for his cause. A martyr to a movement that would send ripples of change throughout the fabric of time. His name along with others would be invoked by the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. who also gave his life for his public work. Without struggle, there is no progress. Without sacrifice, there is no reward. Without the past, there is no future. She lived it. She remembers. She wants us to remember, too. I do.
0 comments:
Post a Comment