Sunset after a storm in the Sandwich Ridge Mountains, New Hampshire
I took this photo last year during a family vacation in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire. A thunderstorm raged all afternoon, but just as we were finishing dinner the storm suddenly ended. Three generations of extended family went out into the still-damp field to watch the sunset reflected on the lifting storm clouds. As often happens in the mountains, it was a dramatic change. At the time, and ever since, the play of setting sun on passing thunderheads makes me think of Sam Cooke and “A Change is Gonna Come“, the song that became one of the anthems of the Civil Rights Movement. A Change is Gonna Come
I was born by the river in a little tent Ohh and just like the river I’ve been running ev’r since It’s been a long time, a long time coming But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die
‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky It’s been a long, a long time coming But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.
I go to the movie and I go downtown Somebody keep tellin’ me don’t hang around It’s been a long, a long time coming But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.
Then I go to my brother And I say brother help me please But he winds up knockin’ me Back down on my knees, ohh
There have been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long But now I think I’m able to carry on
It’s been a long, a long time coming But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.
(Listen to Sam Cooke sing it here. You can also listen to a cover by Otis Redding here.)
A singer who blurred the lines between gospel, R&B and pop, Cooke was reportedly inspired to write “A Change is Gonna Come” by Bob Dylan and “Blowin’ In The Wind”. While on tour in May 1963, and after speaking with sit-in demonstrators in Durham, North Carolina following a concert, Cooke returned to his tour bus and wrote the first draft of what would become “A Change Is Gonna Come”.
“Sam as a writer saw himself almost as a reporter,” said biographer Peter Guralnick said in one interview. It’s best seen on “A Change is Gonna Come,” the Cooke song that was adopted as a civil rights anthem. The song was based on the racism Cooke encountered while traveling through the segregated South. (One example – in October 1963, Cooke and his band were turned away from a “whites only” motel in Shreveport, Louisiana where they had a reservation; they were arrested and thrown in jail.) ”He took all of those experiences,” Guralnick says, “but he enlarged upon them and he broadened them to the point that the song… becomes a statement of what a generation had had to endure.”
Sam Cooke died on December 11, 1964 in a shooting at a Los Angeles motel. He was 33 years old.
***
Today is a gray and cold day where I live – a day on the tipping point between winter and spring. To fight the doldrums, I took my two youngest children swimming at the our local YMCA pool. As I looked at all the kids laughing and playing in the pool, the splashing water sparkling on skin that was black and white and every shade in between, I realized that this was a scene that wasn’t even possible in most of the United States when Sam Cooke wrote “A Change Is Gonna Come” in 1964. And while we still have a ways to go, Sam Cooke was correct. The storm clouds will pass and the sun will come out.
“But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.”
This post is a response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Change. You can see more responses here.
This morning, I had a meeting at the US Embassy in Yaounde to discuss human rights in Cameroon. The US Embassy, it turns out, is located on Avenue Rosa Parks. Past security, in the lobby where visitors wait for their escort, the walls were hung with photos and text documenting the life of Rosa Parks, a true American hero.
I realized later in the day that today is Rosa Parks birthday. If she were alive, she would be 100 years old today. Could she have imagined the impact – wide and deep – that her actions would have, not only in her country but around the world? Or that one day there would be streets named after her in places like Yaounde?
I met Rosa Parks once, on the Ellis Island ferry. I wrote about it last February and am reposting it here in celebration of her 100th birthday.
My oldest son is studying the life of Rosa Parks in his 6th grade history class. ”I actually met Ms. Rosa Parks once,” I say. He’s already halfway up the stairs, heading back to the sanctuary of his room. “Did I ever tell you about that?” On the cusp of his teens, he has no interest in being trapped by a pontificating mother. ”Yes,” he replies. He pauses, half-turned towards me, left leg on a higher step, poised for flight. I see my opening and I take it.
***
In 1986, my grandfather Orville Prestholdt was recognized with an Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his contributions as a “Norwegian activist”. I was a sophomore in college and I took a Metro North train down to New York to meet my grandparents the night before for the gala event. The honorees were staying at a fancy hotel, one those midtown landmarks that is long on history but short on space in the guestrooms. As I entered the lobby, I walked straight into the sonic boom of Lee Iaccoca (chair of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, honorary medal recipient). If I remember correctly, I next walked straight into the back of Donald Trump (Scottish-German). Fortunately, “The Donald” was engaged in animated conversation with Mr. Iacocca and didn’t notice my faux pas.
Established in 1986 by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, the Ellis Island Medals of Honor “pay tribute to the ancestry groups that comprise America’s unique cultural mosaic”. Walter Cronkite (Dutch), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (French-Irish), Joe DiMaggio (Italian) – the Ellis Island medalists were a veritable Who’s Who of American immigration. Of course, this was back in the Reagan era when Americans still celebrated the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. The 80 inaugural Ellis Island Award winners had been selected from more than 15,000 nominations following the controversy over the Medals of Liberty. Announced in the spring of 1986, the Medals of Liberty had honored 12 naturalized citizens, including Bob Hope (English), I.M. Pei (Chinese), Irving Berlin (Russian) and Elie Wiesel (Romanian). Numerous ethnic groups had objected that they were not represented among the winners of the Medals of Liberty, however, and had threatened protests during the “Liberty Weekend” (July 4, 1986) award festivities. So the Ellis Island Medals were created more or less as a compromise.
That’s when they went looking for the lesser-knowns with more obscure national origins. People like my grandfather, who had changed his name from Olaf to Orville when he immigrated from Norway in order to “be more American”. My grandfather had charted a successful political career in the Sons of Norway, from lodge president to International Board of Directors. He got his Ellis Island Medal for his “contributions in preserving Norwegian- American culture”. Too late for “Liberty Weekend”, the Ellis Island awards were to be presented on the actual 100th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in late October of 1986. That date fell on a Monday, but I figured it was worth skipping one day of classes to be a small part of history.
Having finally located my grandparents among the honorees at the reception, we headed to the elevator to go up to their room to drop off my bag and change for dinner. Muhammad Ali (African) was in the elevator with some family members; they held the elevator door for us. Mr. Ali tapped me on the shoulder and, when I turned, began performing a magic trick with a polka-dot silk scarf. At the time, I didn’t know that he had Parkinson’s. Or maybe I had heard he had Parkinson’s, but I didn’t really know what that meant. In any event, I watched in horror as the man – who had been such an icon in the 70s when I was a kid – struggled, with trembling hands, to slowly stuff the scarf into a fake plastic thumb. That’s how I found out how they do that disappearing scarf trick. No kidding – Muhammad Ali! The fake plastic thumb was several shades different from the color of his skin and looked dangerously close to falling off his real thumb, but he was focused like a laser on making that scarf disappear. I remembered playing chase at recess on the playground at Magnolia Woods Elementary School. The one who was ”it” would yell, ”Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I am the mighty Muhammed Ali!” As “The Greatest” slowly performed his magic trick for me, I watched the single, crystalline drop of drool that hung suspended from the corner of his mouth. I thought for sure I was going to cry.
My grandfather handled the whole thing much better than I did. Maybe he was just feeling pretty good after a couple of highballs and a chat with Victor Borge (Danish), but he clapped his hands when the scarf finally disappeared and chortled with glee. “Woo-hee-hoo-hoo!!!” He may have danced a little jig in that elevator, too – he was that kind of guy. But I can’t be sure because I had gotten really good at ignoring him when he did that kind of thing in public. At 19, I saw only the weaknesses, the frailties, the embarrassments of my elders in that elevator. Now I see that I missed the courage, the determination, the encouragement, the shared joy in the accomplishment of a difficult task.
That night, as I lay in my narrow rollaway bed listening to my grandparents snore a few feet away from me, I thought about who I might meet the next day. I hoped to see John Denver (German) and Cesar Chavez (Mexican). Maybe also Gregory Peck (English) and Andy Williams (Welsh). Bob Hope was going to be there, too, as his wife Dolores (Irish-Italian) was receiving an award. But the person I most wanted to meet was Ms. Rosa Parks (African-American).
Rosa Parks had been a larger than life figure for me growing up in the post-Jim Crow South. The East Baton Rouge Parish school system underwent court-ordered desegregation when I was in high school, so I had some sense of the courage it must have taken her to do what she did. I thought she was an American hero.
The awards ceremony was to take place on Ellis Island, so in the morning we were all bussed down to Battery Park and the chartered ferry. Most people stayed up on deck for the short ferry ride, cameras at the ready to take photos of the Statue of Liberty. About halfway through the ride, I went inside to look around. And there she was! A tiny, birdlike woman with large glasses sitting alone on a bench by the window. In my mind’s eye, she is wearing a hat, coat and gloves but I can’t be sure I haven’t borrowed that memory from other images. She sat prim and erect, her hands folded on her purse in her lap, looking straight ahead. It is exactly how I always pictured her on the bus. I walked over and asked, “Can I sit here?” She looked up at me and nodded briefly and I sat down. Then my courage failed me. I can’t think of what to say next. As we approached the Statue of Liberty, she turned for a better view out the window so, of course, I did, too. ”She’s smaller than she looks in pictures,” remarked Rosa Parks to me. Or maybe just to herself, but I smiled and nodded anyway. Then we approached Ellis Island and her family came to collect her. I went back up on deck to look for my grandparents.
***
“Maybe a famous person like Rosa Parks didn’t really want to talk to you. You were a stranger,” my son speculates.
“Maybe,” I say. ”But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was just sitting there, trying to think of what to say to her and how I was wasting my one chance to talk to her. It was like I was frozen. I never did say anything else to her, other than ‘Can I sit here’?”
“So what would you have wanted to ask her on the ferry?” my son wonders.
“Well, I guess I would have asked what it was like to ride that bus.”
Twenty-five years later, I realize that Rosa Parks was probably asked some variation of that question nearly every day of her long and beautiful life. She was probably asked it more times than she could count. Asked and answered; you can google it.
“I don’t recall that I felt anything great about it,” Ms. Parks remembered in an interview with the Montgomery Advertiser. “It didn’t feel like a victory, actually. There still had to be a great deal to do.”
This conversation with my son made me realize that I didn’t need to ask her anything that one time I met her. I didn’t waste my one chance to talk to Ms. Rosa Parks. It was enough to be able to sit quietly in her presence for a few minutes. An African-American and a Norwegian-American, sitting side by side on the ferry and gazing together at the Statue of Liberty.
It’s been pretty quiet over here on The Human Rights Warrior. I’ve got a long trip coming up soon, so haven’t had much time to devote to non-essentials (sadly, that includes blogging). I felt I just had to respond, however, to the Weekly Photo Challenge with some of the images and words that mean “Illumination” to me.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail about how future generations of Americans should celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence:
It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
On Christmas Eve, bonfires are lit on the Mississippi River levee to help guide Papa Noel. (St. James Parish, Louisiana)
Fireworks!
Le respect, c’est accepter quelqu’un même si on ne l’aime pas. Respect is accepting someone even if you don’t like him. (Discovered this on the wall of a school in the Pâquis neighborhood in Geneva, Switzerland)
It’s been a long, a long time coming.
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.
- Sam Cooke
The sun comes out after a storm in the Sandwich Range, New Hampshire
I practiced asylum law for the first seven years of my career, representing refugees who were fleeing persecution and human rights abuses in their home countries and seeking safety in the U.S. These are people who are not easy to forget and whose stories shouldn’t be forgotten. Many of their stories – the details of their lives, their losses, their dreams – have stayed with me over the years. The remarkable thing about the refugees I have known is not only their ability to survive incomprehensible losses, but also the strength and hope and determination they have to remake their lives in an entirely new country. To learn new skills, speak new languages, adapt to new cultures. To me, the refugee experience symbolizes this week’s Photo Challenge theme: Renewal
The picture above was taken in Buduburam Refugee Settlement in Ghana, which I visited three times between 2007 and 2010. Buduburam was home for 20 years to more than 30,000 Liberians who fled the bloody conflict in their West African country. Officially closed this year, Buduburam was a small, bustling Liberian city in the countryside outside of Accra. Life was hard on the camp, where refugees even had to pay for water to drink and for access to the latrines. To improve their opportunities, many of the refugees at Buduburam enrolled in skills training courses; the photo shows some of classes offered by the New Liberian Women Organization (macrame being one of them, as you can also tell by the colorful plant hangers). Even in a time of limbo, the refugees at Buduburam were striving for renewal. Those refugees who could afford it sent their children to school as education offers a chance for a new life.
I still hold many former asylum clients in my heart. I’d like to share the story of one refugee family I represented. For me, it is a parable of renewal.
James and Julia (not their real names) had been politically active in their native Kenya. Julia, in particular, had been very active in speaking out against an oppressive government. They had a young son, who I’ll call William, who had huge, solemn eyes. When the police came to their house to arrest Julia, a police dog bit William on the head. You could still see the jagged scar on his scalp more than a year later when, having left everything they owned behind to escape Kenya, they were seeking legal assistance with their asylum claim in the U.S.
In police custody, Julia had been brutally beaten. She was also repeatedly raped in custody, including with objects such as the muzzle of a rifle and a Coke bottle. This testimony was critical to the success of their asylum case, so we had worked with Julia to prepare her to tell her full story, with as much accuracy as possible and as many details as she could remember. ”Just tell the truth about as much as you can remember of those weeks,” I urged. We all knew it would be painful.
Julia testified about her experiences in a straightforward manner and in excruciating detail, but with such poise and dignity that both the asylum officer and I were in tears. Asylum officers are specially trained federal officials who make decisions about asylum cases based on a written application and an in-person interview. During my time practicing asylum law, I rarely saw an asylum officer actually cry during an asylum interview.
I remember well how James sat next to her, utterly still. Not touching her, not looking at her, but supporting her as she spoke. Anguish is the only word that could possibly describe the look on his face as he listened to her testimony. I had to look away. Even in my role as their attorney, a role which requires a special intimacy, I felt the need to give their family some small space of privacy as they recalled those terrible days.
Years later, after they got their citizenship, James and Julia had a party to say thank you to all of the people who had helped them. In addition to their attorneys, there were people from their church and other members of the Kenyan community. They now lived in a big, new house out in the suburbs. Julia was close to graduation from nursing school. William, who I hadn’t seen since he was three, was now in middle school. He was a straight-A student and talented musician who had just gotten braces. They had another child, too – a daughter born here in America. She was wearing a pink tutu.
It had taken a lot of hard work for James and Julia to get to where they were. They had experienced many challenges and frustrations with adapting to life in this strange, new country. But they persisted and, through sheer effort and determination and a bit of creativity, slowly but steadily they moved forward, finding healing for themselves and building a new life for their family. It wasn’t easy, but James and Julia had managed to make something new out of nothing.
Photos of European Parliament Member Licia Ronzulli with her daughter keep popping up on my Facebook news feed and Pintrest. My friends are mostly moms, so I speculate that they had an emotional reaction when they first saw the photo of MEP Ronszulli with her baby. I know that I did. I cheered and teared up a little, almost simultaneously. Then I stopped and asked myself, “Why?”
The photo of Ms. Ronzulli at work with her baby is not a new – it was taken in September 2010. While this photo caused a splash in Europe in 2010, it took a while for it to catch on here. That’s about right – as a country, the US is generally well behind Europe in terms of policies that support mothers.
Although she doesn’t bring her daughter to the European Parliament regularly, there are other photos of Ms. Ronzulli and the now-toddler Vittoria. During a vote on the Eurozone debt crisis on February 15, 2012, reporters snapped several photos of Vittoria with her mom at the European Parliament.
The media coverage I have seen has focused on the cutesy (“awwwwwww”) or “hilarious” aspects of the photos. That’s too bad. I think the media missed the opportunity to talk about WHY American moms like me are cheering for Ms. Ronzulli.
Here are a few reasons:
1) Ms. Ronzulli’s employer, the European Parliament, has rules that allow women to take their baby with them to work. Most American women do not have that option.
2) The photos perfectly symbolize the work-family balance that all of us working moms struggle with every day. The fact that, according to media reports, the photo of Ms. Ronzulli with her infant was taken during a vote on proposals to improve women’s employment rights makes it all the more poignant.
3) Ms. Ronzulli is showing the world that childbirth does not automatically flip the offswitch on our female brains. Women continue to be productive employees even after they become mothers. The Daily Mail, which ran the February 2012 photo in an article titled “Does my vote count, mummy?”, describes the 36-year old Ronzulli as seeming “in complete control in spite of having her baby on her lap throughout.” Why is this such a surprise? I know that I, for one, have become better at multitasking and more efficient at doing my work since I had my first child.
4) In the 2010 photo, it appears that Ms. Ronzulli is choosing to keep her 7 week old infant with her as much as possible. In my experience, that’s important for babies who are still so little. Yet 6 weeks is the typical maternity leave in the U.S. That doesn’t mean that it is paid leave, however. The U.S. is also one of only a handful of countries with no national law mandating paid time off for new parents.
5) Ms. Ronzulli was entitled to a parenting leave, but chose to take only 1 month of it. She makes the point that it is about personal choice. In 2010, she told The Guardian ”It’s a very personal choice. A woman should be free to choose to come back after 48 hours. But if she wants to stay at home for six months, or a year, we should create the conditions to make that possible,” she said. Amen, sister!
6) She looks GOOD! I know I never looked that good 7 weeks after labor and delivery, but many of my friends very quickly looked like their pre-baby selves again. I certainly didn’t look my best when I was the sleep-deprived parent of a toddler, but the world didn’t end. Moms like a little reminder now and then that a having a baby doesn’t slam the door on our ability to look and feel good. Sometimes it sure feels like that, but really it’s just a temporary setback.
7) Ms. Ronzulli probably didn’t have to nurse baby Vittoria sitting on a toilet in the ladies room. That’s something I had to do at some point or other with all three of my babies here in America.
So thank you, Licia Ronzulli, for giving us American moms something to cheer for today and a reminder of what we need to continue to work towards tomorrow!
