2-13-07, 10:47 am

Understanding the fight for things we now take for granted.  
When I was very young I remember my mother taking me downtown to with her so she could do her shopping. Of course that was back in the days when Buffalo had a real downtown, there were no vacant buildings, all the shops and department stores were open. There was heavy traffic, lots of people riding the bus to Main Street, that was a real treat back then, and downtown was so colorful, especially at night with all the bright lights. Now as a young pre-school or grade school kid, I just generally bided my time until mom finished getting her things, and bugged her to get me a ride on one of those coin operated cars or horses, and a chance to eat at one of the counters at 'Woolworth's,'  'AM&As', 'Hens / Kelly,' or any dept. store I try to remember now.

It never dawned on me then, that there were kids who looked like me in other parts of the country who couldn't do that. It never occurred to me that there were black kids older than me who were risking their lives just by sitting at a restaurant or store deli counter who didn't eat anything because they weren't served, and so they refused to leave. Racism existed in Buffalo but it wasn't as visibly evident at that time as it was in the south. There were racist incidents yes, but you could go to the big stores downtown and the suburbs, you could go to Como Park , the waterfront park, the amusement parks. Buffalo whites sat down and thought their racism through a bit more carefully and surreptitiously. They reasoned that if you stop blacks from working, you won't be seeing them in your shops, if you refuse to route inner city buses to suburban malls, you won't need a 'No Blacks Allowed' sign. Eventually these methods produced what would become known as the 6 th most segregated city in the country behind Detroit, Gary, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Cleveland according to that Detroit Free Press 2000 census data.

Many of you old school brothers and sisters nodded in agreement when King declared Birmingham to be the 'most segregated city in America .' You wanted to pretend the north was 'civilization,' but it wasn't. It took King to show this to the world at-large, we're blessed he made this decision. Though Martin's father and grandfather were both involved in Civil Rights as well as the church, we gained a Martin that survived a suicide attempt (from a 2 nd story window) while still a boy, because of depression over the death of his grandmother back in 1941. We gained a Martin that was considered an 'indifferent student' while at Morehouse. And years after organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first attempt on his life was made by a black woman named Izola Ware Curry in Harlem NY on 9/58, who upon returning from a 'Tarzan' movie, and a brief conversation with some friends, stabbed King at his book signing. Yes, she had mental issues, the truth is, many of us have a little Izola in us, in that we found ways to misinterpret King's goal and downplay his efforts as integrationist. Curry told police she was 'annoyed' with King's work in school desegregation.

Understand Martin Luther King was once the most hated man in the US, until Malcolm X came. After that the white man changed his mind and said 'hey Martin let's talk.' King's fight for equal rights wasn't because he was assimilation crazy or loved the white man, as some of us have tried to taint him. He saw a basic wrong in the governments telling you where to sit and telling you where to eat, where to shop, where to play. It turned out that much of black America was already assimilation-crazed, because many of us immediately stopped patronizing our own businesses after the laws were passed. King never told you to stop going to your black-owned businesses, he just opened the way for federal and various state governments to stop telling us where to do business. It only made sense in a country that widely advertised liberty, to be taken to task and live up to it.

So in an indifferent sort of way, many of us are much like Mrs. Curry, we're too busy going to the movies, going to the malls, standing in line to buy a Playstation, buying rims, buying sneakers, we came down with Izola-its. We aren't stabbing Martin or Malcolm or Medgar Evers in the literal sense, but we're stabbing their dreams, their hopes, and their desires for us. The blood they shed so we can attend better schools, have better jobs, have better housing, and vote, has been co-opted due to our lack of revolutionary follow-up, and replaced by low expectations, negative behavior, and individualism. That my friends, is demented.

--Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion, Contact him at