August 28, 1955: Emmett Till a 14-year-old from Chicago is brutally murdered in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. His murderers are acquitted, and the case bring international attention to the civil rights movement after Jet magazine publishes a photo of Till’s beaten body at his open-casket funeral.
December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her defiant stance prompts a year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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Except for on television, I had never seen anyone who wasn't the same race that I was. I remember hearing the name "Stalin." I had heard about Nazis and feared them. I sat alone in our living room and watched a documentary about farm workers and felt empathy. One day I was absorbed in playing quietly while the television was on and heard Mahalia Jackson singing in a way that moved me as I had never been moved before. I remember being taken with a group of children to visit war veterans who were being cared for in a place called "The Fort" in our small San Joaquin Valley town in south central California. I remember standing next to a bed of someone who appeared to me to be an old man, meaning that he was older than my father who was nearly 40 years old. I remember feeling confused, seeing how sad and tired he looked. I was so terrified of the wicked witch of the north, upon having seen "The Wizard of Oz" for the first time, that I ran out of the living room and hid behind a door, shaking with fear. I had nightmares about witches and bulls who took the top of their heads off to reveal that there was nothing inside them. There were sexual predators in our small community of families with fathers who worked for Standard Oil in various capacities. The neighborhood kids and I all watched Mickey Mouse Club on TV and wanted to go to Disneyland. We roamed through the neighborhood freely with no parents supervising us. We even walked outside our neighborhood once to a farm where there were horses, donkeys and turkeys. We were told never to do that again.
We went to "The Fort" to get our polio vaccines.
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No COVID vaccine for me yet. I keep checking the webpage for the clinic where I get my medical care. Several of my friends have already received their vaccines through their health care providers. We are almost to COVID Spring 2021.
The bird song that I can hear, even with the windows closed, becomes more lively each day. I look forward to hearing the song of a robin.
