{"id":1188,"date":"2020-06-06T19:26:13","date_gmt":"2020-06-06T19:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2020-06-06T19:26:13","modified_gmt":"2020-06-06T19:26:13","slug":"driving-while-black-three-times-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/2020\/06\/06\/driving-while-black-three-times-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving While Black … “Three Times”"},"content":{"rendered":"

This column has been written in loving memory of Calvin Milton Jones, who died May 25, 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHas that ever happened to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

His face looked at me with the most serious expression I\u2019d seen from this gentle man.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree times,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

My friend, the late Calvin Milton Jones<\/a>, had just sent me a copy of Dick Gregory\u2019s talk to a Tavis Smiley \u201cState of Black Union\u201d convention center audience. Gregory, the comedian and activist, wondered aloud<\/a>, that if Bill Clinton was truly \u201cour first black president,\u201d would he know (at 1 min,50 sec.) how it felt to be a black man, driving down the road, and hear a police siren:<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. President, do you know what it feels like to be a black person, to be a congresslady, to be a lieutenant governor with 12 doctor\u2019s degrees, and driving down the street, and hear the police siren, and you start squeezing that steering wheel tight, and they pass by you, and you Thank God! Damn! You didn\u2019t do nothin\u2019 in the first place. Do you know what it is to be black?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The primarily black audience was in howls, cheering with a standing ovation at Gregory\u2019s presentation. And I realized then that the expression, \u201cdriving while black,\u201d was so real and so common that an entire audience of hundreds had reacted, knowingly and in unison, with raucous laughter at Gregory\u2019s searing remarks.<\/p>\n

After I watched it, I walked over to Calvin\u2019s office and asked him, \u201cHas that ever happened to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked me straight in the eye, \u201cThree times\u201d \u2026 on the way to and from Washington and his hometown in North Carolina.<\/p>\n

So this gentle and generous man \u2026 who arrived at the office at close to five o\u2019clock every morning \u2014 even the day before he died, sick with pneumonia \u2014 to turn on the lights, make the coffee, check the phone and computer systems, arrange the conference rooms to be sure everything was in place for the days\u2019 meetings \u2026 told me, with those words, that he had been stopped by police officers on three separate occasions, just because they knew they could taunt another black man.<\/p>\n

This man, Calvin Milton Jones \u2026 who wouldn\u2019t harm a soul, who cut all the lawns in his neighborhood, because he didn\u2019t want it to look unkempt; who, unasked, often waxed neighbors\u2019 cars; and who would give you the shirt off his back, if you were in need \u2026 this man had been pulled over three times for no other reason than the color of his skin.<\/p>\n

Imagine how it must feel to look up into the eyes of a uniformed man, who, you and he know, could change your life in an instant.<\/p>\n

And now we have young Trayvon Martin, killed by a single shot from the gun of a self-appointed \u2018neighborhood watchman,\u2019 who said Trayvon was, \u201csuspicious \u2026 looks black\u201d and, chasing Trayvon against orders, told 911<\/a>, \u201cThey always get away.\u201d But \u201cthey\u201d (Trayvon) did not get away; and the man who hunted him down wasn\u2019t even arrested.<\/p>\n

Walking while black?<\/p>\n

Author Donna Britt, commenting<\/a> on the shooting death of Trayvon, said, \u201cI don\u2019t know what this child could have done to be safe, except not be black.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being, while black.<\/p>\n

These two men, going about their business, are stopped for being \u201csuspicious,\u201d for being black men living in the world\u2019s lone superpower; which the rest of us tell ourselves is \u201cthe land of the free\u201d \u2026 the \u201csweet land of liberty\u201d \u2026 that exists, \u201cunder God \u2026 with liberty and justice for all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is \u2026 for some.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This column has been written in loving memory of Calvin Milton Jones, who died May 25, 2011. \u201cHas that ever happened to you?\u201d His face looked at me with the most serious expression I\u2019d seen from this gentle man. \u201cThree times,\u201d he said. My friend, the late Calvin Milton Jones, had just sent me a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1195,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penning.us\/Nick2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}