(no subject)
So CNN is making a big deal out of the fact that Obama's inauguration this year is going to fall on Martin Luther King Jr day. And also that this year is the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Haha. Well, I must admit that all this excites me a lot too. Coincidentally, Wenyu and I just went to visit the MLK national memorial in Atlanta. I think it's only the second time I've been to a national memorial where people were crying. The first time was the Vietnam memorial over Memorial Day weekend in summer 2011. There were veterans in full uniform crying in front of the memorial, and I must say that that was pretty touching. But this time? Haha. I actually cried at the memorial too. The thing is, it's one thing reading narratives written by former slaves and learning about the civil rights movement from white professors in Berkeley. It's completely another to be visiting the MLK memorial in the heart of Atlanta, watching a video about the contributions of black children during the civil rights movement, standing next to a black woman who looks like she could well have been one of those children, and then hearing her recite along with MLK in the video:
And when this happens,and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
I think it was in that moment that I finally fully appreciated that people died for the freedoms that I enjoy today.
That moment was just... amazing and powerful and touching.
Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.
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