American Dream, Unrestrained

Mayor Scott D. Jackson

as prepared for delivery

 

We gather today in tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I thank all of the Town employees, residents, and special guests who have given their time today to attend this ceremony.

It is my distinct honor to welcome you here to this Town event as Hamden's Mayor, its first African-American Mayor, and its first Mayor born after the “Civil Rights era” so neatly defined and delineated in today's history textbooks.

I was born in 1971 on Putnam Avenue in Hamden, Connecticut. In many ways, the revolution had come... and gone. But here in America, we have a curious way of defining our own history; of what is current, what is past, and how we connect to, or disconnect from, those moments in history that shame us.

As early as the mid-sixteenth century, in its very infancy, the nation that would later become the United States of America engaged in the practice of enslaving other human beings. December of 1865 saw the end of chattel slavery in America with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Of course, our national shame did not end there. It took another hundred years and the passage of the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 for black Americans to have the full protection of the law when exercising their right to vote; our federal government's attempt to bring to an end four hundred years of official policy subjugating people easily identified by the color of their skin.

It was through sheer accident of birth that my mother has always been able to vote without harassment. The accident is that she was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, not Waterloo, Georgia. When I look at it that way, history becomes much more current.

Unlike most of human history, we have a dense photographic record of these years when Dr. King emerged as an icon, a leader, a rabble rouser, and ultimately America's saint. I am always fascinated by pictures of the era, particularly a series of photos of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine sent to desegregate Central High School in 1957, taken by photographer Will Counts. Ms. Eckford's calm simplicity is, perhaps, the story of these photos. Or maybe it is the hate in these pictures. A youthful hate created by indoctrination, not experience. A hate based on whispers. I have referred to these pictures when talking to my friends and my family about the uncontrollable sadness I feel for those who end up on the wrong side of history. Those who cling to yesterday's shame without realizing it visits the shame upon them. And the people we see in these images and cast in the role of villains are still here. They are the peer cohort of my mother, my aunts and uncles, friends and colleagues who work for the Town, and I can only imagine how it feels to be the villain in this American saga.

As it turns out, the story has a coda. Elizabeth Eckford is not the only woman in the photo with a name. The young woman behind Ms. Eckford is named Hazel Massery. Both Ms. Eckford and Ms. Massery still live in Little Rock, and sometimes they are even friends. To quote Hazel Massery, she feels like "the poster child for the hate generation, trapped in the image captured in the photograph." She knows her younger self to be the villain, standing on the wrong side of history.

In 1988, as a high school senior, I first came across one of my favorite statements: “the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.” That was Dr. King's exhortation that we all stay ahead of the curve, to avoid imprisoning ourselves in the box that still tortures Hazel Massery 45 years later.

The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. A great framework, but at its core, the statement is inaccurate. The arc does not bend of its own will, its own accord. We bend it. It is not enough to be right; it is our duty to be righteous. Righteousness demands that we do not cower in the darkness when we see injustice. Righteousness demands that we speak up—even if we speak alone—when we find ourselves confronting another bend in history's long arc. Righteousness demands that we gather together and seek out those who agree with principles on which this nation was founded, even if its practice has been found wanting.

We live in outstanding times. Unlike my parents, who lived the American Dream, darkly, my sons Max and Eli can grow up with the American Dream, unrestrained. On King Day, a day of tribute and a day of service, this is what I celebrate.