Confederate Flag

[Jim Page]

Hey, Herb--

You wrote:
>>Doesn't meeting someone great feel tremendous?

Funny, but that hasn't been my reaction, for some reason. In the case of Dr. King, at the time I met him (April 1964), he wasn't regarded highly in a lot of places, and I'm not talking about just the American South. He was a change agent, and those folks are always frowned upon by those who don't like the changes.

For example, Dr. King said to me, "What will you tell your friends in school about meeting me?" I replied, "I don't know. I haven't thought about it." He then said, "If you're smart, you'll say nothing about it. If you do, you'll be called a certain name by many of your friends." As we were driving home from Tallahassee to Fernandina Beach later that day, the radio was full of news reports about the rabble-rousing Martin Luther King trying to integrate restaurants in Tallahassee. The place where we had met him was a downtown Morrison's Cafeteria, which was a popular restaurant in those days. Of course, it was whites-only.

Years later, in Naples, Florida, some friends and I were having coffee in a donut shop late one night after a band gig. There were four of us; two white girls, a black guy, and me. The next day, my mom got a phone call from the Naples police chief that her son was seen associating with negroes in public.

My mom, who spoke her mind no matter when or where, asked the police chief if I had been associating with him or any of his staff while at the donut shop. The chief answered, "No," and my mom said, "Well, thank God for that; that WOULD be embarrassing."

That was circa 1970, and Naples wasn't a typical Southern town.

Things are strange and things change over time in this world!

--Jim