Last night, Bonnie and I met at the McNay to see the film, Four Little Girls, part of  Black History Month.

This documentary was made twenty years ago by Spike Lee, but I'd never seen it before.  (It's free on Amazon Prime.)

Spike Lee interviewed the parents, families and friends of the four little girls who died on that Sunday in 1963, who talked about the aftermath of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

One of the things that struck me watching it was the music--the Black gospel music, the church music, the choirs.  In those days, in the South, there were two worlds: "Colored" and "White."  While we passed each other casually in stores and on streets, we didn't really know each other--except in cases of black women serving as "maids" for white families.  Schools and churches were segregated.  Lunch counters and restaurants were "for whites only." At the movies, "Coloreds" had to sit in the balcony.

I'm looking for a word to describe my feelings when I am reminded of the cruelty of so many white Southerners to black people.  While "shame" is usually a word that describes personal regret (of which I have a few), there must be a word to name the experience of sorrow over what "our people" have done to others.  As I learned last night, Birmingham was the "most racist city in America."  But as one of the speakers said, we couldn't have had a George Wallace or a Chambliss (the killer) without a shared world view by so many who made their presence possible.

Music crossed the racial lines.  The song playing in the background of the film at the 16th Street Baptist Church was one known in all Baptist churches: "The Church's One Foundation."

It mystifies me still--how segregation and discrimination could have lasted until the 1960s in the South and even more so that it still exists in many places.  Blacks and whites might have shared a foundation, in soil, food, religious beliefs and geography, but we were so far apart that the memories of the South are entirely different depending on the skin color you happened to be born in.

To see clips of police dispersing peaceful protestors (adults and children) with fire hoses, to see  dogs trained for viciousness attack adults and children, and to listen to Sixties Southerners of both races recalling the cruelty of that time--these pictures always evoke something akin to personal shame, just as hearing the current plight of so many Native Americans evokes when recalling the massacres "our people" perpetrated on them when we  took over their peaceful homeland.

Throughout my teaching career at UTSA, I always assigned Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.  Before reading it with my students, I showed them the film of the March on Washington and the "I Have A Dream" speech.  These two, along with King's letter, echo in my mind as I hear young people protesting for change in 2018.

People of all places and times find ways to discriminate against other people--for their race, their beliefs, their gender or sexual preferences, their age.  Those in power grab more power by favoring those who look like them, believe like them, and spend financial and political capital as they do.

But these Florida teenagers and their parents are going to keep speaking truth to power and the world is taking notice.  "The answer is blowing in the wind," but their courage gives us all hope.