Today is the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. As I have done for each of the past six years that the Washington Wizards have hosted a matinee game on this holiday, today's post has something to do with the Civil Rights Movement. While there is plenty of action in the NBA today, this is not the day to post about basketball. Basketball today is a megaphone for something greater than a game.
Over the past six years, I have tried to write about places that had some significance to today's namesake, Dr. King. I've written about the Sanitation Workers' Strike in Memphis; the Lorraine Motel in that same city (where Dr. King was assassinated); the Lincoln Memorial (where he gave his famous I Have A Dream speech); West Park in Birmingham, Alabama (site of some particularly violent 1963 protests); and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall. To reinforce my own understanding of these events, in the last six years, I have been to each of these spots where these events happened. There's nothing like being there to understand history.
Sandwiched between all that, I wrote a post about the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement. I figured marking the milestones of the some of the events making up the Movement might help me understand the bigger picture. It did.
This year I'm going way smaller and way more local. To Cherrydale.
About two years ago, I got married and moved to Cherrydale, a section of Arlington, Virginia defined by I-66 to the south; Cherrydale Baptist Church at the intersection of Lorcum Lane and Military Road at the north; Utah Street to the west; and a variety of roads at the east edge. Check out Google Maps for the internet-defined boundaries.
I am fortunate to work in Clarendon, which means on days that are cool enough (which is generally about September through May), I can walk to work. When I can, my commute involves walking down the north side of Route 29 (yes, I'm refusing to use that other name) past the 7-11, the nail salon, the yoga place and the Safeway all the way down to Highland Street and then hanging a right to walk uphill to Clarendon. Apologies for using the generic names of the establishments along my walk. The names of these businesses don't register with me; I just know them by topic. I know there's a mattress place, a fishing tackle place and a tanning place on the opposite side of the street and I don't know those names either. I'm getting older, what can I say.
Sometime in the last couple of years, I noticed something had changed on my commute route. There had been a plaque set into the wall of the nail salon. Since pretty much nothing else on my morning and afternoon walk changes ever, I figured I'd stop and read it. Turns out in June of 1960, there was a sit-in at the counter of the Cherrydale Drug Fair to protest segregated lunch counters then in place throughout the south.
It is difficult today to think of Arlington as a segregated society. It's not like it's Alabama or Mississippi where people are still clinging to the idea of the old south in the 21st century. But I suppose at one time, it was just as bad if not worse than those places are today. I suppose that really it's not quite as accepting as I think it is today. I'm sure we still have lots of work to do here like we do most places.
On June 9, 1960, six college students from Howard and Duke Universities walked into the Cherrydale Drug Fair, sat down at the counter and because they were not all white, were refused service. They sat at the counter for almost 10 hours and endured threats and assaults throughout the day, including being pelted with cigarette butts and having to suffer through a visit by George Lincoln Rockwell (shown above) who was head of the American Nazi Party which was headquartered in Arlington at that time.
Compare the pictures above to those of similar events in Wichita, Kansas or Greensboro, North Carolina, and I'm sure the crowd standing, berating and leering at protestor Dion Diamond looks pretty tame. I mean there is genuine violence present in some of those photos in places elsewhere. But I'm pretty sure some of the white kids and adults shown above would have taken matters into their own hands quite willingly had the opportunity arisen.
I think it's important today to remember that places where we live today around D.C. were just as complicit in racial segregation as some of the states and towns that I've written about on this day in past years. I also think we need to remember to reject anything like this way of thinking. Today is not about basketball. Today we need to think about what this day means.
That's it for this year's post. Wiz - Pistons today at 2! Let's go Wizards!!
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