My last posting was about Dr. Martin Luther King's final speech, in which he compared himself to Moses on the mountaintop, viewing the Promised Land that his people would enter, but without him.
By an interesting coincidence, a woman friend of mine, an African-American who works at the American Pharmacists Association, recently sent me a remarkable speech given by a colleague of hers, one Robert D. Gibson, who has also made the difficult passage from the Jim Crow era to the present. Mr. Gibson spoke on the occasion of his receiving the 2006 Remington Honor Medal from the APA, and he spoke with passion, eloquence, wisdom -- and dignity.
In fact, he titled his speech, "The Pursuit of Dignity."
Mr. Gibson's pursuit of dignity began at an early age. Even though he grew up in Washington State and not in Mississippi, he wasn't spared the lash of racism. He said: "The boy inside me was too young to understand why I wasn't invited to my white friends' birthday parties. As I grew older, I began to understand why racial slurs were directed at me when playing with my all-white high school athletic teams. When drafted into a segregated Army in World War II, and sent to the southern states to learn to become a soldier, I suffered the indignities of the pre-civil rights era, as did other African-Americans during those days. That is, being unwelcome in hotels and restaurants, the insult of riding in Jim Crow cars, being relegated to the back of the bus, entering a movie theatre through an alley entrance and being required to sit in the balcony, and being jailed for casually strolling, in Army uniform, on what, as I was told by an angry cop, the wrong side of town. I tell you, for any individual who has suffered those indignities, time cannot diminish the offensiveness nor erase the indignation, humiliation and anger..."
That was the beginning of Mr. Gibson's passage, and he does not feel that all Americans have crossed over to the Promised Land of full equality even now. But at the end of his speech, he gave some signs that would indicate when that day has finally arrived:
"I look forward to the day when the civil rights conflict really will be history. We will know the war has been won when a bright eight-year-old student has the same chances in life, whether she lives in Watts or Belvedere/Tiburon, an affluent community just across the Golden Gate Bridge. We will know that the battle is over when the son of a barber in San Francisco's Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood looks to the future with the same optimism as the son of a doctor who lives in Pacific Heights, We will know that the fight is won when the affluent city of Atherton, adjacent to Silicon Valley, and the low-income city of Richmond, just across San Francisco Bay, have the same college graduation rates ... and the same low prison incarceration rates as well.
"We will know that we have won when it's yesterday's news that a newly-elected governor, senator or president is a woman or person of color, or both. We will know that we have won when diversity in our classrooms or in the workplace is no longer mentioned because it is a fait accompli. And we will know that the war has been won when New Orleans or some other area with large numbers of impoverished people floods again and the poor and people of color are among the first to be evacuated.
"I know that you in this room have already reported for duty in the battle to seek paths of racial amity, to understand that conscience has no color, and that injustice anywhere threaten's justice everywhere. But not everyone has joined this battle, so I hope that you will assist me in recruiting them because there are still among us children who sleep in hunger, rise in cold, and live in ignorance -- and they are of every color and every tribe. Their suffering is unacceptable, I hope I have conveyed to you my belief that the dignity and rights of any one of us is the concern of us all. In this I am ever vigilant."
I'm sorry that space consideration preclude me from excerpting more of this very moving human document, but I think I've conveyed the essence of it.
In conclusion, I can but say to Robert Gibson, Sir, your "pursuit" is over. You have attained a dignity which, like these words of yours, cannot do other than command universal respect .
