A long time ago, way down south, there was a town called Burn-My-Hand. The mayor of the town was Ali Baba and although he could be mayor, which really isn’t that hard when you think about it, he couldn’t cook to save his life. Every time he went to cook something, he burnt his hand. That’s why they called the town Burn-My-Hand, Ali Baba.
Since he couldn’t cook, Ali Baba had to go to the restaurant to eat his meals. Luckily, there was a restaurant in Burn-My-Hand. The restaurant was called Jim Crow’s Restaurant and the guy who owned it was named Jim Crow.
Jim Crow had some rules in his restaurant. He posted the rules in big letters right in front of the door so you couldn’t really say you didn’t know. The first and most important rule was that if you had white or sort of pinkish skin, you could come inside and sit down and have a cup of coffee but if you had black or brown skin you have to drink the coffee in the parking lot. The other rule, and this one wasn’t so important and was written in smaller letters, was that if you had big feet you had to sit at the counter, not at the tables.
Now about this coffee rule, I think I need to explain something before we go on. Back in the old days, long ago, the olden days I’m talking about, there were no plastic or paper or Styrofoam cups, at least not in Burn-My-Hand Ali Baba. The only way to drink a cup of coffee back then was sit down and drink out of a ceramic or glass cup, the kind that break if you drop them. And sitting down and having someone bring you a cup of coffee in a nice ceramic mug is kind of nice. So back then white people in Burn-My-Hand got pretty good service. It’s not like now where everyone gets bad service no matter who you are and has to stand in line and pay a lot of money to drink terrible coffee out of a paper cup. It just can’t taste good in a paper cup, damn it.
But back then, there was still good service and nice cups. Only, there was no justice. Better to have paper cups and lousy coffee and no good service than to have injustice.
Black people were supposed to drink their coffee in the parking lot, stand around, then give the cup back. It was so wrong to make some people do something just because of who they are, it’s so unfair to treat people differently, that you have to be crazy or blind not to see that it’s wrong. Still, a lot of people in Burn-My-Hand thought this was fine.
No black people ever did get a cup of coffee at Jim Crow’s restaurant. No one ever did actually drink a cup of coffee in the parking lot, as far as anyone could remember anyway. But that was the rule.
The rule might have been evil, but it was the rule. And it was written in big letters.
Around lunch time one day Ali Baba, the mayor, was sitting at a table (his feet weren’t too big) and having his lunch like just about every day when Martin Luther King and some friends of his walked into Jim Crow’s restaurant and sat down and ordered a cup of coffee. They were all black.
“Sorry,” Jim said, “but we have a rule here. You can have a cup of coffee, but you’re going to have to drink it in the parking lot.”
“No thank you,” said Martin Luther King, “I’ll have it right here.”
Jim right away called Ali Baba over.
“Mr. Mayor, look at this,” said Jim, “I got some people here violating my rule. Put them in jail.”
“Now hold on a minute,” said Ali Baba, “I haven’t finished my lunch. Can you just give them a cup of coffee so I can finish, then I’ll arrest them.”
“No sir,” said Jim Crow, “I got a rule and it’s no going to change.”
“Then what about you?” the mayor said, looking at Martin Luther King, “Won’t you just go drink a cup of coffee in the parking lot and not bother me during my lunch?”
“Absolutely not,” said Martin Luther King.
“Well, then, damn it, I’m going to have to arrest you. Do you like conflict? Do you like to mess everything up and make everyone mad? I just want to eat lunch and go back to my office,” said Ali Baba.
“If you are upset about my resistance of injustice, why are you not upset about the injustice itself? Which one of those two, the resistance or the injustice, came first?” said Martin Luther King.
“Never mind all that. Okay, I’m going to go back over to my table and finish my lunch. If I come back over here and you’re still waiting for a cup of coffee, I’m going to arrest you. If you decide to leave and get a cup of coffee somewhere else, then, well, I’ll just forget the whole thing and go back to my office.”
So Ali Baba went back to his table and sat down. He took one French fry and slowly chewed it. Then he looked back over his shoulder and saw Martin Luther King still sitting there, Jim Crow still glaring at him, no one bringing out any coffee and no one getting up to go home. So Ali Baba ate another French fry: still nothing, no movement. Ali Baba ate his fries as slowly as he could and waited as long as possible until finally he really didn’t have anything on his plate and couldn’t stand to order any more food.
Ali Baba walked back over the counter. “So, you’re still here.”
“Yes I am,” said Martin Luther King.
“Then I’m going to have to arrest you,” said Ali Baba.
“Just do it already!” shouted Jim Crow.
So Ali Baba lead Martin Luther King to jail and locked him up.
The next day Ali Baba went back into Jim Crow’s restaurant and ordered lunch again, since he still couldn’t cook.
“I guess we showed that Martin Luther King a thing or two about Burn-My-Hand Ali Baba,” said Jim Crow when the mayor came in.
“I’m not so sure,” said Ali Baba.
“Why not?” asked Jim Crow.
“Haven’t you seen the letter Martin Luther King wrote? It’s called ‘A Letter from the Jail in Burn-My-Hand Ali Baba.’ It’s in all the newspapers.”
“In the newspaper?” asked Jim Crow. “I got the newspaper right here and there is no such letter in here.”
“Well,” said Ali Baba, “it’s in all the newspapers except the one right here in Burn-My-Hand. They printed it in New York, in Mexico City, in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in London, places like that.”
“Well how the hell did he get a piece of paper and a pencil in jail?” asked Jim Crow.
“I gave it to him,” said Ali Baba.
“Why did you go and do that for?” asked Jim Crow.
“He said he wanted to write a letter and I didn’t see any harm in that. I figured he wanted to write to his wife or something. I didn’t know he was going to get a letter printed in all the newspapers all over the world and make Burn-My-Hand Ali Baba the laughing stock of the whole world.”
“Why did all those newspapers even print his letter?”
“Well,” said the mayor, “it seems that Martin Luther King is fairly erudite.”
“He’s what?” said Jim.
“He’s erudite,” repeated the mayor.
“What the hell does erudite mean?” asked Jim Crow.
“It means educated. It means he knows things. In that letter he talked about the Apostle Paul and Sock-Rub-Knees and The-Hot-One Gandhi and Henry David Can-Throw and all kinds of folks and I didn’t let him check any books either.”
“Well if any of those folks come into this restaurant, The-Hot-One Gandhi or Sock-Rub-Knees or that one who can throw, they can have their coffee in the parking lot and I don’t care what color they are or how big their feet are. Now listen to me mayor,” said Jim, “you don’t give that Martin Luther King anyone more paper.”
Meanwhile back in the jail cell, Martin Luther King was sitting by the window, resting. He had been traveling from town to town so long, marching against bad rules like the one in the restaurant, protesting, sitting in one bad restaurant after another and not getting a cup of coffee, that he was pretty tired. He was just about to nod off to sleep when he heard a buzzing all around his head.
“Shoo!” he said to a fly that was right next to his ear, and he waved at it to brush it away.
“You don’t really want me to go, do you?” asked the fly.
Now Martin Luther King had see quite a bit on his journey. He was the police bring out mean dogs to bark at people just because they wanted to be treated the same as everyone else. And he saw the fire department turn their hoses on people to wash them off the street because they didn’t think black and white people should be treated the same under the law. He had seen a lot but so far he had not met a fly that could talk.
“Pardon me?” asked Martin Luther King.
“Listen,” said the fly, “hear that?” All of a sudden there was a loud click on the latch of the cell door. “It’s open,” said the fly. “You can just walk out of here.”
“Why would I want to do that?” asked Martin Luther King.
“Why do you like it this dingy, stinky, dark prison cell?”
“Whether I like it or not is not really the most pressing issue on my mind,” said Martin Luther King, “I would not walk out of here without having changed the rules at Jim Crow’s restaurant. If a rule is not just, you should not obey it.”
“Okay, don’t obey it. Stay right here in prison. Fine with me,” said the fly, “But how about this? You see this little needle on my leg? It’s poison. I could fly out of here and sting that old Jim Crow and he would drop dead like a, well, he would just die like a, drop dead just like, like a, you know, a fly!”
“I am interested in nonviolent resistance to injustice, fly,” said Martin Luther King, “not only is nonviolent resistance better for the soul of the one who behaves non-violently than violence, it is more effective at changing the world.”
“Well, you do as you like,” said the fly, “and don’t say I didn’t try to help you.” With that he buzzed right out of the cell.
Some time passed. Martin Luther King was still in jail and Ali Baba went back to Jim Crow’s restaurant for lunch. Jim was just opening the mail.
“Well, this just can’t be!” said Jim.
“I think I know what you got there,” said Ali Baba.
“You knew about this?” asked Jim.
“Is it a letter from the Lyndon Johnson?” asked Ali Baba
“It sure is,” said Jim, “and it says I got to serve coffee to black people right here in the restaurant and I can’t tell them to drink it in the parking lot any more. And you knew about this and didn’t even tell me,” said Jim.
“There is nothing I can do about it,” said Ali Baba. “I guess you have to take the sign down.”
“I would rather close the whole restaurant down!” shouted Jim.
So Martin Luther King walked out of jail in Burn-My-Hand Ali Baba and met up with his friends and they went off down the road to the next town.
Meanwhile Jim went back to his house, lying around on the porch, mad. He heard something buzzing around his head.
“Shoo!” he said and waved at the fly near his ear.
“You don’t really want me to go do you?” asked the fly.
Jim Crow smiled. “How do you do, fly?”
“I’m a bit patched,” said the fly.
“You wait right here,” said Jim. He went back into the house and fixed up a plate of sugar water and butter and brought it back to the porch.
“Well, this is lovely,” said the fly. Jim and the fly became fast friend. Pretty soon, Jim was a fly too and they sailed over the town out to the highway where Martin Luther King and his friends were resting by the road on their way to the next town.
Martin Luther King and his friends were sitting on stones and resting against trees by a field outside of Burn-My-Hand, having a little something to eat and drink. There were a couple of flies buzzing around, and there was a lot of people saying, “Shoo!” and waving their hands, but the flies kept on buzzing around.
“Shouldn’t we take the bus?” asked one of the friends when they had finished their lunch.
“We can’t,” said Martin Luther King, “because the bus company has a rule that Negroes have to go to the back.” Negro is just the old word for black people.
So they had to walk. There was a pretty good-sized hill there in the countryside, kind of a mountain, at least by the standards of this flat country. A taxi came by and there was only room for four passengers. All the friends said Martin Luther King should get in but he said he didn’t mind walking and he would meet his friends on the other side, that they should go ahead and take the taxi.
“I may not get there with you,” he said to his friends, “but we will make it to the mountain top.” They drove off.
“Now,” said the one fly to the other, who suddenly changed back into Jim Crow, standing right in front of Martin Luther King with a gun pointed right at him.
“You could have had a cup of coffee in the parking lot and you wouldn’t have to die now,” said Jim.
“Buzz!” agreed the fly.
“A sip of your coffee would have left a stain on me,” said Martin Luther King.
“You fool!” said Jim Crow, “I own a restaurant. Ketchup stains. You can always wash a coffee stain out!”
“Your coffee would have stained my immortal soul,” said Martin Luther King.
With that, not knowing what to say to Martin Luther King, Jim Crow shot and killed him. The dove swept down from the clouds to gather Martin Luther King’s soul up to take him up to heaven.
“I would have liked to see the other side of the mountain,” said Martin Luther King.
“You will now,” said the dove.
Martin Luther King and dove sailed up over the land, far away, very high up there. It was true: from way up there you could see over the whole land.
“I see something way down there, far away, over there, but it’s so far away I can’t make it out,” said Martin Luther King.
“Oh,” said the dove, “that’s a circle of all of God’s children, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, joining hands.”
“And I hear something,” said Martin Luther King, “but it’s far away and I can’t make out what the sound is.”
“Oh,” said the dove, “that is the children of God singing the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
“Oh good,” said Martin Luther King. “Then we can go the rest of the way up.”
It’s sad that he was killed, like Jesus and Mahatma Gandhi and the Apostle Paul and Abraham Lincoln and Socrates, but at least what he worked for, what he stood for, came to pass. And his friends kept on going. And their friends kept on going. And the friends of the friends kept on going. And now we all keep on going. Amen.
The end.
1 comments
thanks for this, glencadia.