We had the day off from school Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I personally never question it when I get a day off from school, but MLK day is different. I feel like I need to make sure that I don’t take it for granted.
So on that Monday morning (the weather was amazing by the way) I marched in the MLK day parade in East Knoxville with the Muslim Community of Knoxville. This is our fourth year participating in the parade. The parade takes place along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. It’s on the “black side” of Knoxville, in case you don’t know where that is.
I’ve known this ever since I was a kid, but just from walking down MLK Jr. Avenue it’s pretty clear. Knoxville is still segregated; not by law, obviously, but in the same way that my high school cafeteria had a table for the “black kids.”
During the parade we marched past Austin-East High School. A little known fact is that Austin-East was actually two different high schools, Austin High, the all black school and East High, the all white school. The schools were “integrated” in 1968; one of my aunts was actually attending the school when it was happening.
When you think of Martin Luther King Jr. you probably equate him with his famous, “I Have a Dream” speech. That day in 1963, in front of more than 250,000 people, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “ One hundred years later and the negro is still not free … One hundred years later, and the negro is still languished in corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.”
More than 50 years later, and Dr. King’s words are still so very relevant. There is a clear divide between where black people live and where white people live in cities all over the United States, and Knoxville is no exception. With that being said, Knoxville has one of the largest and most prominent MLK Day celebrations in the country.
I have heard Knoxville described as “The last white city in the South.” The name fits.
Unlike other prominent cities in the South such as Memphis, Nashville and Atlanta, the black community in Knoxville is not as far reaching. So when people ask me what I did this weekend and I tell them about the MLK Day parade, it doesn’t surprise me when they answer with “What parade?” People tend to stick to the side of town that they live on and when they do venture out, they don’t go past the Old City.
But when my dad tells me stories of how when he was a kid he wasn’t allowed to visit the Tennessee Theatre on Gay Street or how when my grandfather worked as a porter at the old train station downtown he was restricted to the “colored only” section, I think of how far we have come.
Dr. King’s words come to mind: “This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
Hawa Henderson is a senior in microbiology. She can be reached at [email protected].
