Over the past few days
I have watched many presentations on the life and legacy of Mr. Nelson
Mandela. I also watched my friends post quotes
and photos on various social networks.
Many of those days, I felt like I needed to make a post, but I just
couldn’t find the quote or photo to capture exactly what Mr. Mandela and his
life meant to me.
In 2000, I had the pleasure
to experience Mr. Mandela. I was in 5th grade and he was being
honored in Memphis with the Freedom Award which is awarded annually by the
National Civil Rights Museum. For all
the wrong reasons, it was a big deal to me.
Little did I know, this moment would come to mean so much more to me in years
to come. I remember listening to Mr.
Mandela speak and giggling at his accent, never fully understanding the
magnitude of that moment. I do recall,
however, one of the speakers saying that we were all a part of a history that
was larger than this room, larger than Memphis, TN, and larger than the United
States.
Being in that room with
Mr. Nelson Mandela was larger than missing school. I just needed time to digest
it.
The memory of hearing
Mr. Mandela speak did not surface again until middle school. I was working on a project for Tennessee History
Day, a project which I now attribute to my foundation as a budding
scholar. I wanted my project to be about
civil rights, so I visited the National Civil Rights Museum. I had been to this museum many times, but
this visit made me remember the time that I was in the same room as Mr. Nelson
Mandela. The visit meant so much more to
me at this point in life. I really thought
that I would make my project about him. However
after further thought, that didn’t happen. (I’ll make another post, one day,
about that story because it’s pretty funny.) Instead, I researched the
sanitation strike in Memphis during the Civil Rights movement. My paper, I AM A MAN: A Grassroots Encounter
with Institutionalized Racism during the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, won
third place in the competition and I advanced to the state competition. I was a
proud 8th grader. I always knew that Mr. Mandela’s visit sparked
that project.
Being in that room with
Mr. Nelson Mandela was larger than missing school. I just needed time to recognize the power of
his presence and the effect that it had on me.
On the morning of Mr.
Mandela’s death, I was working on a seminar paper about which I was extremely
excited. I was (and still am because I
have yet to complete the paper) exploring the rhetorical widowhood of Myrlie
Evers-Williams, Betty Shabazz, and Coretta Scott King as an attempt to advance
a feminism that acknowledges Black educated mothers, and even widows, as revolutionary
and not women occupying traditional gender roles. I knew the paper was going to be amazing, but
I hit a wall and couldn’t find any inspiration.
After taking a break that lasted three hours too long, I stumbled across
an article that imagined Ms. Winnie Mandela as a widow. As I read it, I thought this was pretty
awesome. The article was written as a
critique of the United States’ press coverage of Ms. Mandela during her husband’s
rhetorical death while being imprisoned which made her a rhetorical widow. This was a better example to understand how
to frame my argument.
In that moment of
motivation, I found myself reflecting on the day that I was in the room with
Mr. Nelson Mandela. That day, thirteen years later, meant so much more to me
than it had then. While working on this
paper, it meant so much more to me. The
widows that I was analyzing were the wives of civil rights leaders that I could
only read about and imagine. Mr. Mandela, however, was different. I saw
him. I heard him. I felt his presence over the years and on
this day. I had the motivation I needed
to continue because I realized in that moment that I had been a part of history
that was larger than me, and I was creating a history that would reach further
than me. It was surreal to hear, only a
couple hours later, that he passed. I
wanted to cry, but as a mature young women who felt him that day that was
enough for me and I drew strength from it.
Being in that room with
Mr. Mandela was larger than missing school.
I just needed time to digest it, to recognize and the effect it had on
me, and accept that he was now resting in peace. It is the same peace that he embodied and
the peace that he inspired others to pursue.
Rest
in Peace Mr. Mandela
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