Introduction: TOWARD HEALING AND HOPE It was a Sunday in late June 1963 when a young minister from Atlanta, Georgia, visited my hometown of Detroit, Michigan. I was eight months old, the ninth of Herbert and Mary Louise Montgomery's ten children, so I can only imagine the scene. Yet I can see it clearly in my mind's eye. I can picture Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching down Wood- ward Avenue with as many as 250,000 of my neighbors. Together they comprised the Walk to Freedom, which was, at the time, the largest civil rights protest in United States history. It commemorated, in part, one of Detroit's most notorious race riots, fomented two decades earlier--a riot that had claimed twenty-five Black lives, including seventeen at the hands of police. I can feel the righteous, hopeful demand in the summer air: that our nation make good on its promise of democracy, of democratic values. The demand came less than two weeks after the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Less than two weeks after Alabama Governor George Wallace stood for segregation in a schoolhouse door. One month after a group of brave students staged a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. Two months after the start of Dr. King's Birmingham Campaign. And I can hear, even now--amid the swirling of moral clarity and moral contradiction--Dr. King giving voice to his vision, his dream, which would define the American civil rights movement for the ages. This was an early version of the civic prayer that, through a mix of divine inspiration and improvisation, would two months later become one of the most important refrains in all American history--second only perhaps to the Declaration of Independence, to which Dr. King explicitly appealed.< "I have a dream," he said in Detroit, "that one day, little White children and little [Black] children will be able to join hands as brothers and sisters." He was talking about me. I reflect on this moment for several reasons. First, because this dream--that every child, family, and community can thrive--came to inform and inspire my life's purpose, too. Second, because of where Dr. King finally shared this dream in full, and where our spirits may have met: the Motor City, Motown, the Arsenal of Democracy--but also a workshop for democracy. Detroit was and is my home. It's the site of a grand but flawed exper- iment with multiracial pluralism, a city where hundreds of thousands of Black migrants, refugees from Jim Crow, moved for opportunity during the first half of the twentieth century. It's a city where Americans of every color and creed have always dared to dream, to build, and to push the bounds of industry, enterprise, and equality. I like to think there was a reason that Dr. King first articulated his dream at Cobo Hall in Detroit, two months before he shared it from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. My story starts here--in this time, in this place. This is a Detroit story: one of faith and hope and love, of family and grace and gen- erosity. A story about the ways we, as a community, fall short--but also the ways we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin anew, time and again. This, too, is an American story. As the poet Langston Hughes wrote, with wisdom that transcends generations: America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! It is a story about segregation, injustice, violence, and grief. It is a story about the power of truth--and through truth and connection, the possibility of healing. Excerpted from How We Heal: A Journey Toward Truth, Racial Healing, and Community Transformation from the Inside Out by La June Montgomery Tabron All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
