Black Lives Matter
My Racist Mother
And the riot in Washington
It was either 1966 or 1967. I don’t remember exactly. The family did a lot of sight-seeing during the two years we lived in Maryland. Our parents wanted us to see the glorious landmarks of America. All across Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia we took countless weekend trips.
(One of my favorite trips was to the Hershey chocolate factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I remember drooling as I watched Hershey Kisses being made. My least favorite trip was the one to Gettysburg. The vibes were just awful.)
The destination we traveled to most was Washington, D. C. With so many landmarks it took several trips to see them all. Our first few trips we saw most of the monuments and we even toured the White House. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of President Johnson but, of course, it didn’t happen.
Our father had been to the Smithsonian museum a few times before we kids were born and he desperately wanted us to visit it. He talked about it a lot and it was not long before I was dying to see it. When the weekend came when we planned to return to Washington to visit the Smithsonian I was very excited.
But things did not go as planned. First we drove through Washington to Arlington to see John F. Kennedy’s grave…
