by Ayesha Christmas

Created on: January 19, 2010

As a young child of six growing up in a rural county in England I had never even seen, let alone met, a person of another race or colour. So perhaps it is strange that in 1968 the Funeral of Dr Martin Luther King should have changed my life and become one of my most powerful childhood memories.

I do not try to pretend that until that day I had never heard his name or seen his image but neither had really registered as important in my little world of horses, dogs and younger brothers and sisters. Much to the amusement of all the adults in my life I referred to Dr King as 'Martin Louey the King' In short  I had no idea who he was, where he was or what he did.

So why did my mother find me crying uncontrollably that afternoon, inconsolable after watching the funeral of this great man? It is such a long time ago now that I shouldn't be able to remember it so clearly, after all so many other memories dance, frustratingly out of reach, but the experience seems to have stayed so strong, so vivid that  if I close my eyes I can visualise the room I was sitting in, the pattern on the sofa and even the dials on the black and white TV we had high on a shelf in our large country kitchen.

I did not share the experience, I watched the entire service, solemnly alone, as Dr King's Family sat together grieving in dignity, I I think it was the sight of his children sitting in an immaculate row that probably upset me most, and moved me to the tears my mother found me crying. She comforted me, quickly switched of the TV and took me out into the garden to play with my sisters. Although I was so young somehow the gravity and magnitude of what I had seen became part of my forming personality and attitide.

I don't know who I would have been if it had not been for that day, I might have been exactly as I am, I might still have rocked against racism in the seventies and eighties, I might still have written letters of protest to the South African and Russian governments demanding freedom and justice for the dissident and persecuted and I might still have danced with joy as Nelson Mandela walked to freedom. I hope so. But the fact that I did all these things today and still try to convey the importance of tolerance, justice and love to the pupils of all nations that I now teach in an international school, can be traced back to that experience, because on that day I realised that something so enormous and significant had happened. I wasn't changed, but I was inspired.

I have continued to be inspired by the message and philosophy of this man throughout my life. I am not perfect but I am a better person than I might have been without the inspiration I found on that day.

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