The headline jumped out at me as I flipped through the ancient issue of Life Magazine, removed from its cellophane envelope for the first time since I brought it home from Paris two years ago. It has sat on my bedroom dresser since then, under a pile of this and that, its silver stripe peeking out as an occasional reminder that I have yet to give it to my son the next time I see him. Even so, I have forgotten, several times.
When I slid it out of its packaging, I was surprised at how delicate it seemed, afraid the pages might disintegrate in my fingers. It was from the summer of 1949. I tried to remember why I had bought it, why I wanted to give it to my son. There is a picture of a woman standing in the surf, leaning on what looks to be a blow up raft, the kind you can pick up anywhere, really. The kind we toss away carelessly at the pool when our vacations end, either because they seem kind of pointless or maybe because deflating them is too depressing, when you're already feeling deflated.
Plastic beach boats read the caption. For the first time, it occurred to me that these didn't always exist. Post-war America was filled with new inventions, I suppose, logical accompaniments for the growing landscape of suburban tract houses and white picket fences and folks re-acclimating themselves to leisure time. By the time I was born, ten years later, plastic beach boats were old news.
Maybe I thought my son would be interested in this little snippet of history, and maybe that's why I decided to buy it for him at the flea market somewhere in Paris.
It had never even occurred to me to look inside. The headline was jarring -- U.S. Negroes are Americans. It seemed as odd to me as a cover caption about a plastic beach boat, as if it were newsworthy.
On the opposite page was a picture of Jackie Robinson and his young family, on the stoop of their home in Brooklyn. The quote was his, a polite response to being hauled before Congress to explain why Negroes are not Communists, at least not all of them, just because one Negro claimed that no Negro would fight for America in a war against Russia. Nineteen forty-nine, only ten years before I was born. Sometimes I forget that progress takes time and a lot of hard work, and a lot of backsliding. And heroes and leaders from the most unlikely places. Like an ordinary stoop in Brooklyn.
Fast forward almost three quarters of a century. I am flying somewhere over Montana, connected to earth by some invisible transmitters, on my way to Japan, I cannot believe there was a time when I couldn't do this; when I couldn't charge my cell phone in flight; when I couldn't take my phone out of the house. Technology never ceases to amaze.
I cannot believe there was a time when there had to be an article explaining that Negroes are Americans, or that a gifted athlete without a bully pulpit (other than a stoop in Brooklyn) would have to say this:
And one other thing the American public ought to understand, if we are to make progress in this matter, is the fact that because it is a Communist who denounces injustice in the courts, police brutality and lynching, when it happens, doesn't change the truth of [the] charges.Who knew folks could be so backward back then, that the inherent wrongness of racial profiling and stereotyping and discrimination had to be explained. Phew, glad that's all settled. The unlikely hero continued:
[The] American public is off on the wrong foot when it begins to think of radicalism in terms of any special minority group.
Yes, the wrong foot. Seventy years later, we've come a long way. At least from plastic beach boats.
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