Dear Lee Daniels

In tribute to your movie, I post this excerpt from my memoir, Black Star Girl. 

From Chapter 34, 'The New Job'     ( Note: It was 1972.  Equal Employment laws had required companies to integrate.  Thus the civil rights movement, then an Urban League search brought a major corporation into my life and gave me a relatively lucrative career.)   Please read.

“-----years ago my father’s verbal challenge had me considering, “Would you rather be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond?”  My unspoken answer was, “Neither, I want to be a big fish in a big pond.”  No matter I kept my thinking to myself,  Daddy had launched into a lecture that resulted in opening my mind to understand the comfort or discomfort resulting from the decisions one makes.  The challenge of greater opportunity appealed to me.  That is how I view a career in the profit sector, an opportunity for greater challenge with commensurate reward.

    Even though I was afraid, I knew each day I was able to hold my position in private industry meant another day for me to learn new things, develop new contacts and leave behind noteworthy contributions building my employer’s business,  all leading to a stronger resume to take someplace else when necessary.  If and when I had to hear,  “I’m sorry, we have to let you go,” I would be better equipped than when I came.  Such optimism enabled me to shrug away the cautious counsel of  friends and relatives who cared about me, the divorced mom with two children quitting the known for the unknown.

     An overriding truth of significant importance to me was Equal Employment Opportunity was the law of the land and companies were trying to comply.  In the decades before, courageous people sacrificed, some dying in the turmoil leading to enacting the law.  Did I not have the courage to accept the chance before me?  My obligation was to stay on the path others made possible and face my challenge in my time."

                                                                - Marva Woods Stith
                                      
                                           *    *    *    *    *    *   *

Mr Daniels,  Thank you for telling the butler’ s story; for artfully bringing to theaters the complex history many of us know so well and others do not.   I think it is an important story.

Waiting To See "Lee Daniels' The Butler"

“Why all these movies about slaves?”  A young boy’s voice quietly carried in the darkened theater.   I was certain it was one of the children I had just noticed.

Sitting two rows up with my friends, we were looking at coming attractions, eagerly anticipating "The Butler".  The family (I’m thinking), a man, woman, and three youngsters had filed along the red carpeted path in front of us and climbed the stairs to their seats. 

I waited, hoping to hear the answer to the child's question.

“Because people should know about it,” said the father.

O yes. 
                                 ______________________  

Among the few previews the family arrived in time to see:  

"12 Years a Slave", a Steve McQueen movie due out in October.  It is about Solomon Northrup  an African-American, born a free man but kidnapped, sold into slavery and held for 12 years.  

                           _______________________   

FYI, "Lee Daniels’ The Butler" is a terrific movie.  Crafted around fact, tho’ certainly not a documentary, it is entertaining  -  well-told truth about a time I knew and recognized.  Thus my tears.   It is an Oscar winner in several categories.   That’s what I think.

I Remember

Fifty years ago today, Dr. King stood before hundreds of thousands and spoke words that live and resound to this day.  

I remember the moment my sporadically wandering attention fixated, was captured by his words.  He addressed, they say, more than 200,000 men, women and children assembled in Washington DC at the Lincoln Memorial.

Attending via TV, I had been impressed,  proud, and grateful seeing the huge crowd of folk who had come from all over the country (even the world, I’m thinking) for that civil rights March on Washington on August 28, 1963.   A college graduate, married, with two small children, I was watching and listening from my home in Richmond Heights, Missouri. 

Before Dr. King was introduced, other notables had spoken, participating in the program organized to rally the nation to right a wrong.  There was a critical human condition issue in our nation caused by the continuing injustices endured by blacks because of the lack of freedoms strategically denied them.  Racial segregation and discrimination was a national sore, festering more in some communities than others, but as my father taught me, 'expect it'.  (Read my award winning memoir, Black Star Girl.)  So, listening, my mind wandered, driven by my own internal deliberations, I sort of tuned out what the leaders were proclaiming.  I knew and thought enough about our dire situation to begin mentally crafting all the reasons, the realities of why civil rights progress sought would not be forthcoming for us, for a long time.  My skepticism reigned.    Congress would essentially ignore, proceed at their pitiful speed to let politics rule, not give the President the support he would need. 

Then Dr. King moved from his already dynamic, informative words into the “I have a dream” cadence and I was totally hooked.  My thoughts became his thoughts.  Why shouldn’t it happen?  Why wouldn’t equality be established for all citizens, regardless of color or heritage? The cameras panned showing enthusiasm -  mixed with faces, black and white, frozen in wonder.  I remember thinking, “will tomorrows news convey the spectacular moment this is?” *

It didn’t matter.  From that moment on, I was absolutely hopeful.  And, less than a year later, on July 2^nd, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

                                    ========= 

To find Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech, type ‘I have a dream’ in your Internet search line.

*I’ve discovered, even though the 8/29/63 Washington Post gave fine front-page coverage to the previous day’s March on Washington, it did not mention the now iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.