HOW MLK COST ME 15 HOURS OF “A”
I interned as a teacher in the spring of 1968 at Cherokee Junior High School in Orlando during a time when the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War had polarized the country. I had completed all required class work and needed only the internship to complete my bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in education. I was in for less than I expected – less socially, less ethically, less educationally.
The center of the Civil Rights Movement was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an eloquent speaker who had been raised and educated on the King James Version of the Bible, just as I had. When he spoke, I heard the Elizabethan cadences in his speech. His nonviolent resistance to unjust laws and inequalities was as close as anyone in America came to following the exemplar of Jesus Christ; I admired his courage. He had become a hero to me because I understood the prejudice and hatred he was up against.
I was born in Alabama, but I had an extraordinary father, who taught me to judge all human beings by their character and productivity, not by any outward appearance. He backed up his words with his actions, so I saw him treat everyone with kindness and consideration. He said, “Remember, the center of Christianity is love. You must love all other human beings, even those who hurt you and say evil things against you.” That was a tough rule to follow, but I saw that rule practiced by Dr. King.
My wife interned at Boone High School, so for $75 a month we got a garage apartment off Mills Avenue and rode the city buses. We were poor but educated and eager to conquer the classroom and contribute to the education of children.
My first day at school I met my supervising teacher (Mrs. R), a good old girl from Georgia, a stout brunette with blue eyes and an engaging smile and polite Southern manners.
My first clue that something was ethically amiss was the classroom seating arrangement. In Mrs. R’s classes, all the white students sat up front while all the black students sat in the back. Mrs. R responded eagerly to the raised hands of the white students while the darker-skinned back rows glowered in sullen neglect.
The second clue that something was not ethically right in the school was the segmented, racially charged faculty eating arrangements. Some optimistic or evasive teachers ate in the cafeteria with the students. A group of black teachers and teachers originally from the North ate in the teachers lounge. A group of middle-aged white Southern teachers ate in the boiler room. Mrs. R invited me to join her and her Southern cronies in the boiler room.
I had bitten into my ham and cheese sandwich from my sack lunch when the first nigger joke went out into the hot, smoke-filled air of the boiler room. The first was followed by a volley of denigrating jokes about blacks. I nearly choked on the ham, but covered my revulsion with a smile.
After that day, I realized I would have to walk a careful line with Mrs. R. I didn’t want to be complicit with the racism, but I also wanted to get a decent grade so I could graduate. I told her that I was going to eat in the cafeteria with the students, so I could learn more about them faster. She seemed to accept that as a plausible tactic for a beginning teacher, and I never ate in the boiler room again.
I planned my lessons and taught everyone in the class and avoided discussing politics. The black students learned along with the white ones. They smiled at me and asked me questions. They understood I wasn’t like Mrs. R.; only when Mrs. R. appeared would they revert to their former state: mute dismay. After six weeks, Mrs. R told me that she could see I was going to be a fine teacher and that I had an “A in the bag.”
Then Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., my hero, was assassinated. My wife and I spent the night in a dark, oppressive cloud, worried about what would happen next. I dreaded encountering Mrs. R. the next day.
However, a story from the Bible settled in my mind. I’m sure it was a story that Martin Luther King Jr. had been very familiar with. On the night before Jesus’s arrest, Jesus had told his apostle Peter that he would deny Jesus three times before the cock crowed the next sunrise. Peter said that would never happen, but sure enough, when Peter was confronted by the Jewish authorities who said “You are one of the followers of the Christ, aren’t you?” three times he denied it before the cock crowed. This failure of courage bothered Peter the rest of his life.
The day after the assassination, several of the overwrought teachers were absent. The black teachers and the teachers from the North who did show up wore black armbands and wept. The bigoted Southern teachers wore snide smiles and snickering grins.
Through the tension of that morning I walked with Mrs. R to class. She strutted. I prayed for silence and academic mercy. She said, meaning Martin Luther King, “He got what he deserved.”
I took a deep breath, but then I blurted my true feelings. “I’m sorry, but I disagree. Martin Luther King was a great man and what he was doing will ultimately benefit all Americans, not just blacks. Now all we have left are the radicals, and we’ll have riots and burning cities.”
Arching her eyebrows, she looked askance at me and said, “You may be right, but you’re not a true Southerner.”
“Maybe not.”
“The only reason I accepted you as an intern was that I saw you were from Alabama.”
I shrugged, but I was proud that I had not denied my hero, and I would try my best to love Mrs. R. even if she hated me.
The rest of the semester was tense, but we managed to not speak politics again. At the end of the term, she presented me a cigarette lighter and wished me well and smiled politely, deceptively.
My directing professor from the university voiced some confusion about my progress as an intern, but he asked no direct questions. He followed the supervising teacher’s lead. When my grades came out, I had fifteen hours of B, a 3.0 GPA, instead of fifteen hours of A, a 4.0 GPA. The bigot had had her slight revenge, and Martin Luther King was dead. I did not protest the unfair grades based on bigotry and accepted the grades as my piddling sacrifice in the struggle against racism and bigotry.
THE END
As an educator I knew that "separate but equal" was no longer the law of the land, so teachers that continued separate but unequal in their classrooms were violating the spirit and letter of the law. I also understood how the unopened minds of the bigots were as much a burden on themselves as on the ones they hated.
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