Dear Dr. King,
I hope you were blessed by the day of celebration and service in your honor. I just wanted to let you know that your dream is still alive and that even in Mayodan, NC, people are making progress.
I have two sons, 9 and almost 11, and they play basketball at the local rec center. Last Monday, afterschool, we stopped at Food Lion to pick up groceries and saw one of their teammates, who happens to be bi-racial. He was shopping with two white women. My oldest son said, "Hey Mom! I think _____ has two moms." To which my youngest son replied, "No he doesn't. One of those is his grandma." "Actually," I said, "I think he does have two moms...and that woman is much too young to be his grandmother." "Well, I know one thing," the little one retorted, "he must have a brown skin dad, because he couldn't have gotten his skin from those blonde women." And I smiled.
Granted, it is 2012. And granted, my children have grown up with the expectation that they will judge people based on the content of their character...not the color of their skin or their family dynamics. But it still felt like progress to me.
And this past Saturday when I relayed this story to _____'s two moms, we hugged and beamed with pride at our boys and laughed for a long time. Because given all the elements of the story where judgment and prejudice could have crept in, we were only appalled that anyone could think ANY OF US were old enough to be GRANDMOTHERS!
Dr. King, I thank you for your wisdom, your sacrifices and your legacy. And I wanted you to know that we are still listening, still dreaming and still believing. Because....We Shall Overcome Someday.
Most Sincerely,
Melanie Miller
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