Martin Luther King: Dream Speech (Full Text)

Martin Luther King began his "I Have a Dream" speech and civil rights activism against Jim Crow laws when he and Rosa Parks became national figures during the Montgomery Bus Boycott fighting Jim Crow laws.

I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King (Full Text)



Martin Luther King at Washington Monument
Article and Full Video of Speech

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

MLK: A Celebration in Word and Image by King, Martin Luther, Jr./ Adel
(Google Affiliate Ad)

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "For Whites Only". We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Art.Com Martin Luther King, Jr.:
 Measure Of A Man Framed Art Print (Google Affiliate Ad)

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
 Volume III: Birth of a New Age,
(Google Affiliate Ad)

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The road to I Have a Dream at the March on Washington started with Rosa Parks (1913-2005) and the Montgomery Bus Boycott .

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., & Rev, Ralph Abernathy
After 1956 Court Victory in Montgomery Bus Boycott

In 1955-56, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King worked with many others civil rights activists through NAACP channels to change local and national Jim Crow laws regarding public transportation, making Alabama the Cradle of Freedom. 

With the dream still unfulfilled, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, on a mission to protest racist treatment of city garbage workers.

© 2012 Sunny Nash

All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

_________________________________________________

Buy Books by and about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World, Special 75th Anniversary Edition (Martin Luther King, Jr., born January 15, 1929) Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), civil rights leader, advocate of worldwide social justice, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, inspired and sustained the struggle for freedom, nonviolence, and interracial unity. His words and deeds continue to shape the lives and destinies of millions.

A Testament of Hope:
The  Essential Writings
& Speeches of MLK

A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

"Brings us King in many roles--philosopher, theologian, orator, essayist, interviewee, and author." -- -- San Francisco Chronicle Review - "We've got some difficult days ahead," civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., told a crowd gathered at Memphis's Clayborn Temple on April 3, 1968. "But it really doesn't matter to me now because I've been to the mountaintop. . . . And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

Stride Toward Freedom

Stride Toward Freedom & The Montgomery Bus Boycott by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. brings together the forces of the modern Civil Rights Movement in its earliest stages and draws the political connections between Dr. King and Rosa Parks. Review and purchase Stride Toward Freedom, also available on Kindle and print formats or make your selection later from lists near the end of this post. In an Amazon review, Howard Zinn wrote, "Martin Luther King’s early words return to us today with enormous power, as profoundly true, as wise and inspiring, now as when he wrote them fifty years ago."

Many of these books above are now available on Kindle and the new Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi, which also offers more than a million digital books, movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, news, apps, games, and more. Kindle Fire Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display & Wi-Fi

Enjoy the Kindle Fire's vibrant color, touch-screen with extra-wide viewing angle, ultra-fast web browsing, powerful dual-core processor, free cloud storage for your content and an array of useful and attractive accessories like the Kindle Fire Leather Cover by Marware.

http://www.sunnynash.blogspot.com/ is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com..blogspot.com

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Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), about life in the Brazos Valley with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement. Nash’s book is recognized by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding U.S. race relations; listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida.

Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash--author, producer, photographer and leading writer on U.S. race relations in--writes books, blogs, articles and reviews, and produces media and images on U.S. history and contemporary American topics, ranging from Jim Crow laws to social media networking, Nash uses her book to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to her life--from music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, Internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, women's issues, adolescence and childhood, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today's post-racism.

African American
 National Biography
Harvard & Oxford



Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press) by Sunny Nash was chosen by the  Association of American University Presses as one of its essential books for understanding race relations in the United States, and also listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida.

Sunny Nash has work in the African American National Biography, a joint project by Harvard and Oxford, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham; African American West, a Century of Short Stories; Reflections in Black, a History of Black Photographers 1840 - Present; Ancestry; Companion to Southern Literature; Texas Through Women’s Eyes; Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy; African American Foodways L; Southwestern American Literature Journal and other anthologies. Nash is listed in references: The Source: guidebook to American genealogy; Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; Ebony Magazine; Southern Exposure; Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places; and others.

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Don Cornelius Rides His Soul Train Into Eternity

Don Cornelius created 'Soul Train,' now part of American folklore and entrenched into the pages of American History.



I was a young working musician in Chicago when Soul Train hit the airwaves. My friends, the Chicago, Brunswick Records soul singers, 'The Chi-lites.' were guests on Don Cornelius’ first Soul Train broadcast. I was also under contract with Brunswick, during those early days, but had no hit record that would land me on Don Cornelius' popular television show, which some credit with the idea of the music video. Many young artists were documented on tape for the first time by Don Cornelius productions.

Back then none of us could even imagine the legacy that Soul Train would build over the next three and a half decades, and the historical value, into which Don Cornelius would weave his legendary invention, a dance show. But like the rest of us, Don had troubles that would develop in his life that even his friends didn't know.

Yes, that little kid from the South Side of Chicago, who attended high school on South Wabash Ave. not far from the Brunswick Record Studio. Chicago was filled with music and had been since the days when the Mississippi River brought the earliest forms of jazz up from New Orleans into the Great Lakes area. Traveling on riverboats, jazz made its way into Chicago and evolved into a rich musical legacy that included soul music.


Don Cornelius

Don Cornelius became a legend among us who will never be forgotten. More than a star maker, he is one of those people who had an idea, which was the African American community's answer to American Bandstand, not that we had anything against Bandstand; we all loved Dick Clark, who tried to include us in his shows but the time had not come for our full participation. 

Don emerged when our time in history had arrived. He made us stars, letting us dance with his dancers who, in some cases, were no better than us, except for those on the line. Placing his unique and personal stamp on racial equality, Don Cornelius created Soul Train just when the Civil Rights Movement was giving way to Black Power and the Afro.


Martin Luther King & Malcolm X

American youngsters, black and white, were wrestling with identity and the meaning of all our nation had been through and was still going through--the death of Jim Crow laws; integration of America's schools; the Vietnam War; and the assassinations of our leaders--President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X.

Some of the the answers to these perplexing national and international issues came in the form of music and dance, brought to you by Don Cornelius Productions out of Chicago in 1970, until he moved his Soul Train to Los Angeles a couple of years later. Soul Train was the longest running syndicated television show in the history of television.

Maybe we took his presence for granted because we thought he'd always be with us. Like our rock, always steady, always here, he apparently decided when it was time for him to go. I am so sad that he left, especially under circumstances that must have been so painful for him that he could no longer tolerate them. Don Cornelius was there when we needed him to cheer us  up, make us smile, help us cut a step, but when he needed us, where were we? I'll always remember your voice, Don Cornelius. It sounded like warm honey. Wishing you peace, love and soul, Don!

Don Cornelius Died February 1, 2012. He was 75 years old.

The Best of Soul Train

          Don Cornelius Can't Dance

Editorial Review: For over 35 years, it was the premier showcase for the latest names in the world of black music.

(Left) Three-DVD set includes 50 performances from the archives, many of which have not been seen in more than 30 years--James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, the Commodores, Barry White, The Isley Brothers, Sly & the Family Stone, The Jackson 5, and many more--8 hours of classic soul, plus bonus interviews with founder Don Cornelius, Smokey Robinson, and others. (Right) MP3 download.

www.sunnynash.blogspot.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's

I use my book, Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's, to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to my life, including food, music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, feminism, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today’s post-racism era. The Association of American University Presses recognizes my award-winning book as a resource for understanding U.S. race relations. My book, Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's, features stories about life with my part-Comanche grandmother, Bigmama, before and during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the Jim Crow south.

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© 2011 Sunny Nash. . All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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College Education & My Mother's Homeschooling Plan

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School, book collection, music and reading history guided my mother when I was growing up. She wanted me to get into a good college. 

Sunny Nash, Age 16
Reading Nancy Wilson Album Liner Notes

My mother made learning part of my life and, even though I attended public school, I was home schooled on top of it. She used history, music, art, media and anything she could turn into a lesson to bring education into our home. If she and my father could have managed for her not to have jobs outside the home, I believe she would have home schooled me, if there had been such a thing when I was growing up.

I had to read everything before I could use a product, eat a food or listen to  music.

My mother taught me extra and above what my school offered because, when I was in elementary and high school, Jim Crow laws still determined where American children would receive an education under separate but equal laws, which were put into place by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 when Plessy v Ferguson legalized Jim Crow laws. I grew up watching civil rights activists, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King fighting to destroy Jim Crow and my mother wanted me to be ready when the Jim Crow education system fell and I would be eligible for good jobs. 

Education was not just about good jobs to my mother. She believed in using all of the mind, whether it led to good jobs or not.

I May Not Get There with You: 
The True Martin Luther King Jr 
by Dyson, (Google Affiliate Ad)

Martin Luther King came into national prominence when Rosa Parks ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for more than a year. The bus boycott became a few months after I started school and last until half way through my second year. My mother was all over that news. So much for  Jim Crow "Dick and Jane" hand-me-down reading books. My mother started me out reading newspapers and magazine articles about civil rights. She asked me if my teachers at school were talking about that subject. 

When I told my mother we were not talking about civil rights, she gathered up every Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King article she could find and she taught me to read them. From that time on, I kept up with every news item and all the media coverage our local television station carried, which wasn't much. My mother bought a tall antenna for our television and turned in to the stations in Houston for better media coverage. When I hear excerpts from King speeches, I May Not Get There With You, it still or I Have a Dream (full speech video), they still brings tears to my eyes.

My mother was not critical of my school for not teaching us about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks. She simply told me they probably had their reasons. But I overheard her saying to Bigmama and my father, teachers were cautious about bringing up civil rights, for fear they may lose their jobs. She also realized my teachers were limited in textbooks, media subscription, art programs and teacher training in history, languages, science and math. And the teaching profession in Jim Crow schools did not pay top salaries even though those jobs required a college education.

In fact, books issued to us at our Jim Crow school had always been used by white students before we got them because budgets for my school were far less than money laid out for our white counterparts. My mother supplemented at home what I got in school and did her best to support my schools in terms of extracurricular programs, academic activity development and volunteering without interfering with the established curriculum or taking away my independence.

Some people think that volunteering, as noble as it sounds, is only for wealthy people who may not have enough activity to fill their empty days or others who have days off from good jobs and want to fill their lives by volunteering some community service. However, my mother and others like her volunteered to lend support in our Jim Crow schools that were deficient in funding.

Preparing for college meant doing well in school, but not to the exclusion of my music lessons and entertainment such as movies and travel.

Dissecting the ACT 2.0: ACT Test Preparation Advice of a Perfect Score (Google Affiliate Ad)

Certain I would be offered scholarships to Jim Crow black colleges, my mother wanted my education to be college preparatory so I could attend a white college, offered scholarships or not. She wanted me to SAT preparatory, especially math, and ACT preparatory instruction. When she asked at school how to prepare me, the teachers were not sure. So, my mother went out and asked people she worked for who had children in good colleges how they studied for those tests. 

"Times are changing," she said. "You must be ready to get in there and make it. You have to find something you do well and do it alongside the best of them. You have to decide what that will be and go to school for it." My mother let me make some decisions, but she made the important and immediate decisions that affected every day life and my education.

Before letting me listen to music at home, my mother made me read album liner notes. "Liner notes teach you history," she said. "Someone researched and wrote the biographies of those musicians. Take a minute to learn what you don't know." At first, I didn't care to read about the music or the artists who played and sang the music. I just wanted to listen to the music. But if reading the album liner notes was the only way I could listen, I read them. I was careful about how I answered my mother's questions, remembering that she had read about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and the Woolworth Sit-ins before handing the article or book to me.

My mother was right, of course. I learned artist history and music data, such as origin, instrumentation, studio, performance, radio information, lyrics, industry trends and label announcements. Knowing this information was like having the inside track into the music business. I got so hooked that I read the music notes on my own with my mother's prompting. "See," my mother said. "I told you music notes  made interesting reading."

My mother's lesson plan, different from that of my school, took every day items and turned them into problems for me to solve or a book for me to read and understand.

Stirring Prose: Cooking 
with Texas Authors

Herbal teas, homeopathic medicine and organic beauty potions were all within my mother's interests. She developed these interests from her part-Comanche mother, Bigmama, whom I wrote about in my book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's. From my book, an essay about a family beauty secret was included in Stirring Prose: Cooking with Texas Authors, a collection of stories by 39 of Texas' best writers, including Kinky Friedman, Liz Carpenter and Molly Ivins.

Sunny Nash Biography on Amazon

 Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's

My mother's vast knowledge of history, art, math, science, astronomy, geography and literature constantly surprised me. How could she know so much? I thought. Now, I remember. She was curious and read a book from cover to cover on a variety of subjects and passed this reading habit to me, especially in art and history.

Because my mother augmented the education I received under Jim Crow laws, I went on to graduate from a major, predominantly white university. Upon arriving to some classes, I was advised by professors that my early education probably had not prepared me for such high academic aspirations. What the professors were saying was my Jim Crow education was inadequate and they knew it. But my professors had not factored in my mother. I am not saying that my elementary and high school did a bad job. Many of my teachers were dedicated educators. Further, I am not saying other kids who went to my Jim Crow schools or schools like mine could not compete academically at a major university. What I am saying is: I do not think I could have done it without my mother. Those among my professors who had underestimated my college preparation, had to reassess their opinion when I made "A" grades, earned scholarships and was placed on the dean's list several semesters.

1908 Oat Cakes Recipe
Quaker Oats Cereal Box
Company Founded 1850

And my mother did not stop my education at reading about the health benefits of certain diets and budget comparisons when shopping. Oh, I wanted to stop her when she started about the history of oatmeal. Before we made oatmeal cookies, she lectured me on the food having been around since before the Civil War, 100 years before Cocoa Puffs. I really loved Cocoa Puffs. "No one wants to know the history of Cocoa Puffs!" She said, nearly ruining my appetite for oatmeal cookies, too.

My mother was saving all kinds of recipes for a cookbook she was writing. She collected old-fashion recipes and cookbooks.

My mother, Bigmama and I ate one oatmeal cookie each, holding me responsible for what and how much I ate, one of the best lessons they ever taught me. "Eating properly takes discipline," my mother said. "Like studying in school and making good grades, you can't hide overeating or not turning in your homework," she said. "It will show."

Alpha Omega Publications LAN 0409
The Written Report (Google Affiliate Ad)

If I complained about reading a book, an article, a recipe or other assignments, my mother made me write a report on a country in South America or the history of the telephone or a current world event or some other seemingly random topic that she pulled out of the air. I realize now that her topics were not randomly selected. Like everything else she did, subjects for writing reports were chosen carefully and were part of her education plan. 

Because my mother was such a good writer herself, she had the skills to evaluate my writing and would not accept sloppy reporting. Needless to say, my mother taught me to stop complaining, speak intelligently on many subjects and write convincingly, without a clue that, one day, I would be a published author and public speaker. 

Education was a priority in my mother's life and she made school a priority in my life, as well.

Littie Nash, 1947

My mother, Littie Nash, had taken my hand when I was six years old and walked me to first grade on the first day of school. That was just three and a half months before Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Littie was angry that the Supreme Court decision, Brown v the Board of Education, just one year before, had not integrated or changed the Jim Crow school I would be attending. However, she was determined to squeeze as much from that school as they could offer me. 

"I thought things would be different for you than they were for me," she said to me. "But having a school is better than not having a school." And from that point on in my education, she made the best of the schools available to us and was convinced she could make up the difference on her own. And she did without complaining about it again. As far as my mother was concerned, there were excuses. "You see what you have to work with," she said. "And you work with it the best you can." That's what she did with me and my young relatives and friends, many of whom practically lived with us on occasion.

In 1947, when my mother graduated from high school, black students were less than half as likely to graduate than white students. An "A" student, my mother had ambitions, although she had attended Jim Crow schools and was acutely aware that Jim Crow laws would throw barriers into her path. Littie's mother, my Bigmama, who was born in 1890, lived through violent racial times in American history, managed to become literate and understood how to prepare her children for life under Jim Crow laws, preparation Bigmama's children passed on to their children.

To my mother, travel was as important a part of my education as reading books and going to school.

Colored Waiting Room - Public Bus Station 1940s

My mother's first ambition after graduating from high school was to travel, which she did. Visiting family and friends all over the country, she saw siblings in California and Colorado, who had gone West to get good jobs. She also had relatives and friends who had gone East for that purpose.

My mother made the rounds riding on Jim Crow buses and trains; eating, using facilities and waiting for departing connections in colored areas throughout Texas and the nation. Jim Crow laws and accommodations were disappointing to her but did not stop her from moving freely about the country. According to my mother, "Traveling is part of your education. If you never go anywhere but where you were born and raised, your understanding of people in other places is limited."

My mother was very demanding of herself and me. This was the example she gave me to grow by. She said good grades were my job. To make my job easier, my mother created a reading corner in the living room, more for herself than for me, and bought newspapers, magazines and books--history, science, art, biography, encyclopedia and other reference materials--and made me read them after she'd finished. She made me a study corner in my bedroom with a table and bookshelves. In that little reading corner, I learned what education was all about--reading and, later, it would be all of the reading that would earn me scholarships in college.

Somewhere along the way, my mother got off her original course to attend college, got married and had a family instead and became a great mother, my mother. Later in her life, she did get back on the college track, but in the meanwhile, she had me to nag about grades. When my mother enrolled in college to broaden her own professional possibilities, she brought home 'A' grades, using those credentials to build a profession in nutrition.

Because my mother loved to cook and was so good, she turned her talent into a marketable skill in health and medical support, for which she won regional and state cooking honors and corporate grants to develop recipes in coordination with physicians and other medical professionals. In these competitions, Littie put her cooking, as well as writing skills, into action against hundreds of contestants around the state and nation, and published recipes and methodologies in food journals, newsletters and instructional manuals.

"You have to read," my mother said. "How else will you know anything useful to say? Or be able to answer questions on tests and scholarship examinations? You have to write, too. How else can you ask for and get what you want?

"Do you write white?" I asked my mother, sarcastically."

No." she said. "I present correctly written English. I don't always win, but I am always a finalist. There is no color in the process, as long as the judges don't know I'm black, and I only enter competitions that do not require an appearance," she said, smiling. "That way, the judges do not know my color and cannot use my color to dismiss me before they get their team of chefs busy making my dishes."

My mother knew the limitations Jim Crow laws placed on her ambitions. She also knew, when I was growing up, Jim Crow laws were on their way out. Flickering black-and-white images on the television news broadcasts confirmed her belief that, one day, my color would not be an issue like hers had been. Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the violence in Birmingham, Alabama, against school children came into America's living rooms nightly during media broadcasts showing me the future. "You have to be ready when the time comes," she said. "It won't matter what you will be allowed to do, if you are not prepared and cannot do it.

Although my mother always had time to hear my ideas, her word was the last word in the conversation. She reminded me that I was a child, and had not been in the world long enough to know what was best for me. I did not get an allowance for chores or money for good grades. "Those things are the least you can do to contribute around here," my mother said. "You are responsible to yourself for those things. Besides, we're poor. Now, go in your room and turn off the light. Lights don't grow on trees around here." Every day is Mothers' Day to me.

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Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's

 by Sunny Nash

African American
 National Biography
Harvard & Oxford

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press) by Sunny Nash was chosen by the  Association of American University Presses as one of its essential books for understanding race relations in the United States, and also listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida.

Sunny Nash has work in the African American National Biography, a joint project by Harvard and Oxford, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham; African American West, a Century of Short Stories; Reflections in Black, a History of Black Photographers 1840 - Present; Ancestry; Companion to Southern Literature; Texas Through Women’s Eyes; Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy; African American Foodways L; Southwestern American Literature Journal and other anthologies. Nash is listed in references: The Source: guidebook to American genealogy; Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; Ebony Magazine; Southern Exposure; Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places; and others.

© 2012 Sunny Nash

All Rights Reserved Worldwide.