Moved to tears

I wasn't planning to write about this initially but I figured I should share it. In the Delta we visited so many emotional and historically important sights pertaining to civil rights: The Bryant's store in Money (Where Emmett Till "whistles" at Caroline Bryant), The barn in Drew where Emmett was brutally murdered, the courthouse in Sumner where the men who killed Emmett were found innocent.
I was moved to tears on several occasions. But tears actually streamed down my face on two...
The first was the visit to Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer's grave.
She was a sharecropper who joined the fight and tried to get the blacks in her town of Ruleville to register to vote. The registration process wasn't easy- among many things, on the application blacks had to list employers, read, interpret and translate parts of the constitution without help to workers who were completely biased (in light terms). In a culture of terror and fear, she insisted on pushing through Jim crow voting laws and in her attempts to make her voice heard, she was jailed and brutally beaten. I knew of Ms. Hamer vaguely but on this occasion, I heard her story of job loss, relocation, congregation and her rally to gather an integrated representation for the democratic national convention of '64 (Mississippi Freedom Dem. Party). In the live broadcasting of her speech conveying to the American public of the conditions in the south and voting, Lyndon B. Johnson cut her off and switched from the live broadcast.
Something about her persistence in a time of such resistance moved me to tears.

The second occasion was after a couple of hours at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis when I watched footage, stood in the room and reflected on the place where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
On the balcony of the Lorraine Motel standing next to his friend Rev. Kyles, as he was speaking to Jesse Jackson below, King was assassinated. And I know that we hear the same "I have a Dream" facts of MLK and so by the time we are of a certain age we think we all of the man meant. But, U.S. history paints Dr. King, Rosa Parks, genocide of Native Americans, and so many other things in a simplistic and therefore inaccurate light. I could go on for days about the new details I've learned about Dr. King over the years and in the Delta..but I won't. I'll just say that 40 years later I am still touched, and moved to tears by his motivation, perseverance and language. 40 yrs later I am still in awe. 40 yrs. later I am still trying to figure out how he maintained peace and even overcame the fear of death.

If you get a chance check out the following documentaries: MLK: from Montgomery to Memphis and The Witness from the balcony of room 306