January 2021 Daniel R. Wallace
Social media has provided me with the chance to meet with some of the coolest people. They are everywhere when you are right like I or you know how to look. If neither of those is you, then you may need some help.
Jimmy Mays posts about his tale and the bits as it goes and they are always most sincere and fly true from source to goal.
“I have Parkinson’s and then of course affects my fingers and my speech so the words don’t always come out right but I’m in great spirits and I have everything I need but I do have some mental confusion and the words don’t come out that I want to say but yes that would be nice thank you”
Jimmy was responding to a request to share a story and he wanted to make sure such was understood in case something was amiss. I think he writes better than most and his brain is on a degenerative misfiring pattern so he has plenty of excuses. The effectiveness of his communication should remind some of us that we don’t have any.
Pictured an old editorial cartoon of the press blaming Dr. King for violence in the exact same manner so many do with Black Lives Matter and today. It is a little frustrating that we have changed so little in that time.
Jimmy replied with this story about his father, William Carl Mays.
“My dad my precious dad got to march with King I’m so proud of him he drank at a redneck bar and Frayser and of course they found out about his views and I heard a lot of noise outside one night as a little boy and sure enough there was a fire by the street they were burning a white sheet and a small cross I didn’t have a clue what it meant until later. When I was about 11 my dad took me to a hamburger joint on Cleveland called Dyers and instead of us going in the front door we walked around the side to the back he didn’t say a word he never said anything to me about race relations but sure enough I saw the sign colored entrance one other thing and I’ll be quiet he helps several black men get their license in plumbing he was a master license plumber but he felt he owed it to them because he knew they knew what they were doing but they couldn’t pass the test because of their poor education so he taught them the needed mathematics and they passed the test and when he died I was crying out loud at Our Lady of Sorrows Church on Highway 51 North and my sister grabbed me after the service and said Jimmy don’t worry you weren’t the only one crying out loud there were several black men that were also doing that that had to been them.”
We keep watching and waiting for a world different when it is people like Mr. Mays that make it so by being so.
