Rebecca Washington of MCC’s Registration and Records Office grew up in a small South Carolina town during the 1950’s. She remembers the “coloreds only” water fountains and the off limits restrooms. She remembers the packed food of long car rides since no restaurants or road side diners would serve her family along the way.
“I saw a lot,” she says.
Last week, as she boarded a bus to Washington, D.C., she thought of her father, Ezekiel who had to drop out of school in the first grade. She thought of her mother who never attended high school. They did what they had to do, according to Washington. But they were determined their own children received an education. “They weren’t going to be happy until there were five diplomas up on that piano,” she says with a smile. “They valued education. They taught me to value education.”
But they also stayed off the back roads because of klansmen. “If they wanted their families to be safe, they lived with their heads down,” she says.
In recent weeks, she has often thought of their sacrifices. “We were not raised to be bitter,” she says. “We were raised to be better. They taught us that we were just as good as anyone else.”
Rebecca Washington couldn’t imagine being anywhere else the day Barack Obama was inaugurated as the country’s 44th President. As she stood in the cold, looking toward the Lincoln Memorial, she remembered the TV footage of Martin Luther King Jr. standing at that same place. “I was overwhelmed with tears of joy and relief,” she says. “The camaraderie, the people, the moment – it was truly joyous.”
When she was a child, she remembers the old black men talking, “Sometimes, you can’t just knock down a wall,” they’d say. “Sometimes, you have to take a wall down brick by brick.” According to Washington, she’s been waiting a long time for that wall to be disassembled. “I feel like it’s gone now,” she says. “We’re here. It’s real. This is the promise.”
Photo: Ervina Malin and Rebecca Washington, who both work in MCC’s Registration and Records Office, attended the inauguration of President Barack Obama together.
 
<https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99681722>
Janet Ekis
College and Community Relations
01/29/2009 |