While the World Watched by Carolyn McKinstry Read Free Book Online

marked “coloreds,” and I could not use those things or places marked “whites only.” What I had not yet learned was the depth of hatred that mandated those segregation laws. It seemed that what people learned at their churches on Sundays about unity and love they placed on the shelf during the remainder of the week. We were engaged in a no-win hate war. But as long as we black people “stayed in our places,” our community was relatively safe.
    One day while my mother shopped at Pizitz during a bargain basement sale, my little brother, Kirk, stood on his tiptoes and drank from a whites-only water fountain. A white man approached Kirk and told him he could not drink water from that particular fountain. My mother overheard the scolding and stood up to the man. “He can’t read the ‘whites only’ sign,” she said. “He’s only five years old!”
    I was aware of the signs, but my family never talked about them. I didn’t feel angry or inferior because I had to use the toilets that were marked “coloreds.” Not until Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to our church and called the signs and other inequalities to our attention did I really start to notice them and their underlying message. Dr. King pointed to the drinking fountains and said, “See these signs? They shouldn’t be here. These are the things we’re trying to change.” Dr. King told us that we ought to be able to use the public water fountains in the city because “all water is God’s water.” I couldn’t have understood at the time that the signs were symbolic—and symptomatic—of deeper issues within our society. I would soon have a rude and painful awakening.
    * * *
    Being born halfway in and halfway out of the Civil Rights movement, I had questions: Was it an advantage or a disadvantage? Did God intend for me to be in the middle of the vicious struggle between blacks and whites during the 1960s? And if so, for what reason? At the time I couldn’t see any blessing in those closed doors, but in the years since, I have learned that God makes no mistakes. All the things that happened to me were working together for good. I was caught in a particular moment of national history, smack in the middle of a city known as the nation’s hotbed of racial injustice and violence. But even as young as I was, I felt that God was watching and that he would, indeed, bring good out of this situation. No matter how bleak things looked to me, I trusted God to work this out for the good of my community. I had to trust.
    In the midst of everything, I had a strong fortress, a refuge from the violent world around me—Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the sanctuary where I could freely worship God and find peace, safety, and security within its strong, comforting, brick walls. And I had the stained-glass face of Jesus in the window looking down upon me with his love, approval, and assurance of protection against the hostile world outside.
    That is, until the morning of September 15, 1963.

Chapter 3
    The Strong One
    * * *
    Carolyn . . . your name means “strong one.” Whenever you are called by your name, Carolyn , the person is also calling into your life the strength you own through your name.
    My grandfather, Reverend Dr. Ernest Walter Burt
    Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
    Robert F. Kennedy
    “Three minutes,” the mysterious caller had said. As I placed the receiver back in its cradle, I pondered the call for a few seconds. Then I remembered I had not yet collected the adult Sunday school reports.
    * * *
    I took seriously my responsibilities at church. Reverend had entrusted me with adult-size jobs, and my grandfather had instilled within me long ago a deep sense of sacred honor in doing God’s