Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Hello again. It is amazing how quickly the loving feeling of Christmas disappears. Tiny Tim's adage "God bless us, every one" alters into calling Jews Christ killers by Easter. If people read their Bibles more closely, it was the Romans who killed Jesus of Nazareth with the epitaph of King of the Jews on his cross because his crime to be crucified was indeed calling himself the King of the Jews without the Roman Emeperor's permission. So there. The Valentine candy is out on the store shelves and the roses are prominently displayed. Another holiday for love.
Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and his speech on his dream is widely publicized. Sure, I was in heaven waiting to be born when he was murdered and to my knowledge there were no race riots or looting in Des Moines like other parts of the country. I think I read someplace the black churches here had vigils at night in his honor. So my perspective on the man would not be the same as my parents' generation.
I am only sorry that Martin Luther King Jr. missed out on a documentary on a mining town in Iowa who had an owner experiment with race. Whites and blacks were equally paid, raises and promotions were by merit, they both attended school together, sang in the same church, played in the same band, played sports together, and none of the children who currently lived at the time of the documentary recalled any race tension at all. The title of the piece was "You can't go back to Buxton" by the Iowa Public Television Station. I forget when the town first started, either late 1800's or early 1900's. It was a period of time before the miners dug all the coal out of Iowan dirt. Today, there are very few, if any, coal mines left. The larger buildings of the ghost town of Buxton were there and the children of the abandoned town when the coal dried up were trying to open some kind of museum or monument to the experimental town. This would be around 1995-96.
The only problems the children had when they left Buxton and scattered all over the country was the racial tensions they met. The slurs and foreign stereotypes hit them hard like a knife in their hearts because they never had that experience before. How does one explain to a child why a stranger calls them bad names they never heard before? I couldn't even explain to my college roommate from Thailand why whites and blacks hate each other. Sorry, I don't know. I'm from a small town so I grew up not knowing any racial slurs and unaware of racial stereotypes. I am still learning them.
It is sad that these children of Buxton never knew they were free at last or not judged by the skin color, but on their content of their character until they left this utopia. It is so sad that Martin Luther King Jr.'s Promise Land of racial harmony was in Iowa and he never knew it. Anyway, Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Post later. Bye!