A Full Day

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day. It's also my late father's birthday. I always chuckle slyly when the two days collide because my father—how should I put this—was not a vocal supporter of civil rights or the equality of the races. He was a product of the old segregated south and believed people should "know their place" in this world. It irritated him greatly when the country devoted an entire day to the likes of MLK (he believed the FBI when they said the man was a communist pinko instigator), and to have that day fall on his own birthday was like an extra slap in the face.

My father's birthday was always a simple occasion and punctuate with dessert. Every Saturday for all the years I can remember, my mother made a cake-mix cake that would carry us through the following week. On the week of Daddy's birthday, she would make the German chocolate cake variety because Daddy just loved the stuff, and it was served with a heaping mound of butter pecan ice-cream. We were not allowed to have pizza because of the role the stinking Dagos played in World War II, but we were allowed to have German chocolate cake despite the stinking Krauts.

When I got older and was capable of handling the mixer, I would often be the one to make the cake on Saturday, and I liked working with the German chocolate mix. The oozing coconut filling was easier to work with than a full bowl of frosting, and licking the spoon was always a pleasure. I'm not sure if Germans were actually responsible for coming up with this cake, but it's a good one.

In college, I took a speech class that required me to spend time in the library listening to famous speeches. I sat at the headphone station in the audio room and reviewed speeches I had heard about but had never listened to all the way through. I listened to recordings of Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, and then Martin Luther King's speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. When I heard those words—all of them, not just "I have a dream"—my eyes welled up and I played it over and over again. What was it I was supposed to reject in that speech?

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood." Was that the part that was bad?

Or maybe it was this: "I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

I bet this was it, the evil that made this man despised at my father's dinner table: "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope."

Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a perfect man, but it wasn't his human flaws that made him such a threat. It wasn't the rumors of his string of girlfriends or his ties with the Communist party that made him a target for assassination. It was that he saw something better ahead and peacefully sought out ways to get there. It was that he wanted what my father had—the same rights and the same respect and the same opportunities for his children. I don't believe I had the capacity to articulate this when I was younger and sitting at my father's table with my fork in the German chocolate cake, the crumbs mixing with the butter pecan, but what I wanted to tell my father on his birthday and on all days was that he didn't have to give up what he had in order for King and others to share in it, too. There are plenty of rights to go around. There is more than enough respect and opportunity for us all to sit together and lick the spoon and share in the cake.