David McElroy

A couple of months ago, Thanksgiving day started out with some unexpected drama on my street. At about 12:30 a.m., I heard emergency vehicles screaming down the street. They stopped right next door to my house. I had no idea at the time that a man was dying just a few feet away from me.

As I watched, emergency crews went in and out of the house for at least half an hour, hurrying to get things from their vehicles. I took pictures of the bright red scene — as you see above — but I never knew what was going on. I finally went back inside and the trucks and ambulances left. I assumed someone might have been taken to a hospital. Maybe it was a fall. Or a heart attack. I just didn’t know.

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that I talked with another neighbor who told me what happened. I don’t know the woman who lives in the place where the emergency crews were working. I’ve seen her a few times, but we’ve never talked. I just knew she lived alone with her young daughter, who I’ve spoken to briefly a few times

What I didn’t know is that the woman’s brother had come to stay with them. I don’t know how long he had been there or why he had come, but it was apparently more than just a brief visit. Even if I had known he was there, though, I would have had no way to know that he was dying of a heroin overdose that night.

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I’m not celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday today, but it has nothing to do with disagreeing with the man or his stated goals. I simply have no use for the political agenda of the people who claim to be carrying on his legacy.

If you listen to mainstream media accounts of the day, all decent people are joining together to celebrate civil rights and freedom. Here in Birmingham, the local newspaper has its coverage headed with these words: “Alabamians join together in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. — From Huntsville to Mobile, people are stopping to remember the civil rights icon with charity projects, speeches and marches.”

That’s a simplistic and sanitized version of what this day means. The implication of much of what you read today seems to be that anyone who doesn’t celebrate King’s birthday must be racist. The truth is more complicated and we need to admit that.

I live in the heart of where the Civil Rights Movement took place. Some of the worst abuses of white political power were on display in Birmingham as black men and women such as King (and some of their white allies) demanded change. There’s a Birmingham Civil Rights Institute if you need documentation of some of the evils of the day.

Black men and women didn’t have the same rights under state and local laws in many places, mostly in the South. It was difficult or impossible for blacks to vote. The law required black children to attend inferior schools and denied them access to schools for white children. Jim Crow laws required the segregation of races in various public facilities, such as waiting rooms, restrooms and even water fountains. Black people had to be afraid of how they were going to be treated by police and other public officials.

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I spent a couple of hours Tuesday with a woman who’s going through a divorce. She told me at length about what she’s going through and what led to her divorce.

After 24 years of marriage, this woman filed for a divorce a few months ago, because she found out last February that her husband had been cheating on her with multiple women over the years. He’s the last person she would have ever suspected of being a cheater. They were very active in their church and he had always seemed like such a moral and ethical man. He wasn’t just a member of his church, but was an active leader.

He had emotionally neglected her over the years, ignoring her for the most part, but she stayed with him because “at least he doesn’t cheat on me.” She said when they first married — when she was 27 and he was 24 — she made excuses for him. “It’s just because he’s younger and immature,” she said she thought. Eventually, she grew accustomed to being ignored.

They were both software programmers when they met. She gave up her career to raise children, and her skills are badly out of date now that she needs a job. He moved up through the ranks of a major bank to a senior management position over the IT department. Although he had a very high income, he spent little on her. He took her to cheap restaurants and said they couldn’t afford nice places — which never bothered her until she discovered the expensive places where he had been taking his mistresses for all those years.

“Why?”

That’s the question she’s left with. Why did he do all the things he did? And why did she accept what little she was getting from him? She didn’t believe in divorce, but she nows says if she had understood 20 years ago what she understands now, she would have left him just for the emotional abuse of neglect, which she now says was worse than any physical abuse could have been.

She’s left alone now in a small apartment, crying more often than she wants to admit — asking, “Why?”

I don’t know that I have a point to make from her story. It’s just a brief portrait of a hurting woman who’s lost her trust in people — and is questioning her faith in God — because of the way she allowed herself to be treated. There’s not really a larger point. It’s just a glimpse. But I have two other stories to tell along with it.

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