(The conversation continues around the dinner table).
DAD: The 30s saw the rise of the Nazis in Germany and the subsequent nuisance they constituted to the rest of the world. At the height of their claim of the superiority of the Aryan race, the heavens gave them something to ponder as Jesse Cleveland Owens, a Black man, shattered records at the 1936 Olympics staged in Berlin, Germany. Jesse Owens won 4 Gold medals and while Hitler had to eat his words as a result of Jesse’s feat, what was even worse for this American hero was that his own President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt snubbed him because he was a Black man.
JUNIOR: That must have been incredibly sad.
DAD: Yes, sad indeed. Those were cruel times our people had to endure but that was nothing compared to slavery. In a way, it makes it easy for us to grind on. We had seen worse. At the close of the forties decade, five significant events happened that would significantly define the next 50 years worldwide. First, on October 24, 1945, the United Nations came into being. Second, India won its freedom from Britain on August 15, 1947, led by Mahatma Gandhi after decades of struggle. Martin Luther King Jr. later adopted Mahatma Gandhi’s mantra of non-violent resistance in America’s fight for civil rights. Third, on May 14, 1948, Israel became a nation. Also, in 1948, the National Party came to power in South Africa. They introduced the policy of Apartness or Separateness, which later became known as Apartheid.
MOM: Upon Israel becoming a nation after the partitioning of Palestine, the countries of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon invaded Palestine. In a twist of irony, instead of wiping out the State of Israel from the face of the earth as they had vowed, Israel gained 60 percent more territory. They are not a people anyone can push around, not after the Holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
DAD: On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China at the end of a bitter Civil War that led to the defeat of the administration of Chiang Kai-Shek, also known as the Kuomintang or the Chinese Nationalist Party. The Nationalist Party retreated to Taiwan, where it has remained till date to the chagrin of Mainland China, which is committed to reunification, if necessary, by force. The Chinese are a patient people. Chairman Mao Zedong had famously said to Nixon and Kissinger in 1971—on the Taiwan problem—“We are ready to wait for 100 years if necessary.”
JUNIOR: Problems everywhere. Will we ever find peace upon the earth?
DAD: I do not think so. But every group needs to strengthen itself for war to find peace. We had our ongoing problems in America in all that time as segregation was alive and unwell everywhere in the Deep South of the United States. It could not get more profound than Louisville, Kentucky, where Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, named after his father. By the time Cassius Clay was a teenager, the young preacher, Dr. King, had been thrust into the national limelight when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) invited him to lead the Montgomery Bus boycott. He began to confront the day’s injustices with lovely Prose, Legalisms, Morality, Humanism, Ethics, and the Constitution. He had produced a powerful tool that was impossible to deny.
Enter Cassius Clay. (A 12-year-old boy, crying, angry, that somebody had stolen his bicycle, a birthday gift from his parents).
Frozen set.
(Joe Elsby Martin, a White Police Officer and Boxing trainer, is training some kids. Cassius is furious about his lost bike. Someone directs him to Joe Martin).
DAD: Eternal light shines in his pathway as he begins a journey that would set him up to eat with Kings and Presidents. With his lips, he set the world on fire. Young men and women everywhere had his posters hanging from their walls. A true hero had arisen from amongst them. There was hope. Imagine a Black boy from Louisville, Kentucky.
JOE MARTIN: Hey young man, what is the problem?
CASSIUS CLAY: Someone stole my bicycle. I am gonna whup the person when I find him.
JOE MARTIN: What makes you so sure it is a—him and not her?
CASSIUS: Well, don’t they say—what a man can do, a woman can do even better?
(The two men begin to laugh).
JOE MARTIN: Well, I am glad you’re laughing now. Come with me. Let me show you how we can redirect all that energy looking for an outlet inside you. But, of course, if you are ‘gonna whup’ someone, you had better learn how to fight first.
DAD: The year was 1954. The United States, which had reluctantly entered the First and Second World Wars, had evolved to become police officers of the world, guardians of democracy, and guarantors of free enterprise. By this time, Mao Zedong was firmly in control in China as Chairman of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, and Communism was sweeping up Eastern Europe, South America, and parts of Africa. The United States had assumed a manifest duty to stop the spread of Communism, which led to their intervention in Korea. There were two Koreas, North, and South which emerged after the Second World War. The North, however, wanted to swallow up the South. With the backing of China, an emerging power that had Chairman Mao Zedong as its charismatic leader, the North invaded the South. The United States came out on the side of the South, but eventually, the war ended in a stalemate at the 38th parallel, otherwise known as the (DMZ) Demilitarized zone.
JUNIOR: I find it curious that the United States thought Communism was a much more significant threat to its national security than denial of rights to millions of Blacks in America. Is that not what you call ‘ostriching’ if I may coin my own word? Well, thanks, dad. I need to go and hang out with my friends. Can we continue in the evening?
DAD: With all pleasure, son.
MOM: Going by your timeline, it appears you are about to enter 1955. My heart is beginning to pound because I think you are about to tell the story of Emmett Till.
DAD: You could not be more correct. (They hold hands, embrace and break into a sob).
CURTAIN
Look out for a very intriguing Act 4 tomorrow. Please share and subscribe. Let’s have your feedback in the Comments section.
