To Be Free Is To Experience Dangers

The civil rights movement was the ultimate test of freedom.

By Jon Haywood

I flung through the air and landed in a closet.

I had used my mother’s bright orange scissors to cut through the electrical cord of a window fan. I felt a jolt of electricity and landed with a hard thump that frightened my mother.

Fortunately, I walked away unscathed, but, unfortunately, I was not afraid.

I wanted to know how that window fan got its power.

So I tested it.

That’s the type of kid I was — always testing my luck.

Despite many harebrained childhood stunts, I survived, and I think a lot of it was because of luck.

I think freedom is something like luck because you really do not know you have it, unless you test it.

I do not think anyone can truly understand freedom if they always have been able to avoid the danger that essentially comes along with freedom.

Fortunately, I always have been able to evade any real harm or injury in terms of the freedoms I enjoy.

As a black man born in the last decade of the 20 th century, I never had to march or protest anything. My freedom always was right there, ready for me to grab.

As a result, I struggle with the concept of freedom. It’s murky and muddled like the waters of the Mississippi River.

For many modern-day African Americans, the word “freedom” conjures images of the fight for freedom during the American civil rights movement. That movement was the ultimate test of freedom for so many of my elders and the white Americans who helped them.

Even thinking of the civil rights movement troubles me, because it’s not of my generation, it was not my struggle or even my father’s.

I’m envious of the young South Africans I have met who have an amazing understanding of what their freedom means. In fact, they usually can provide details about those moments when racial apartheid fell.

I cannot tell you about realizing that I was free or that I had rights, because I’ve never gone without them.

In the coming years, that gray area of freedom and struggle and triumph for black Americans of my generation will be a major topic of conversation.

What are we fighting against? Educational inequalities? Workforce inequalities? Health care inequalities?

Maybe, but none of those things are as heated as the struggle for freedom that culminated in the 1960s.

My struggle will never be anything compared to what my grandfather chose to fight for. He served the U.S. in the Korean War at a time when the U.S. and its Armed Forces were not places for black people.

I spent countless weekday afternoons and weekends at my grandparents’ home, and Grandfather never mentioned his military service.

However, when doing some research for a genealogy project in a history class a few months ago, I learned that my grandfather was injured during that war.

I can remember hearing the sounds of the rifles firing during the three-volley salute at his funeral. That is the closest I have come to understanding that freedom is the ability to live life the way you choose.

Grandfather lived life the way he wanted. He served his country, got married, worked hard and paid for a home. He and Grandmother had eight children who came home safely every day.

That is the life he wanted.

That sounds simple, but that kind of life was not always easy to achieve for black folk living in the American South.

Grandfather knew the price of freedom, and he could appreciate it.

In contrast, I truly do not know what freedom is, but I believe it provides opportunity.

I know, without a doubt, that my opportunities have come as a result of my grandfather’s fight for freedom.

In my 22 years, I have done more and taken advantage of more opportunities than my grandparents and even my parents.

I was graduated second in my high school class, landed in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College of the flagship university of the state of Mississippi and worked my way through the ranks of the college newspaper.

None of that would have been possible without the hard work and sacrifice of my grandfather, but I still struggle with what I have been able to accomplish.

I grew up where cotton was king, and the old southern gentry called the place home.

Today the Delta is one of poorest regions in the United States. A study from the Maynard Media Center for Structural Inequity found that while black men represent 7.9 percent of 18-to-24-yearolds in America, they only represent 2.8 percent of undergraduates at the nation’s public flagship universities.

When I apply such numbers to my own life, I wonder if I made better use of my freedom than my peers did. I wonder if I have ridden the wave of Grandfather’s successes?

The answer is yes.

When I look back, I am amazed and saddened at how much I have outpaced my high school classmates. Most of them went to community colleges for three years to finish two-year degree programs.

Nelson Mandela once said, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

I did not cast off any chains, but I am comforted by the thought that my grandfather not only was free of chains, he respected and enhanced the freedom of others.

The life I live is what Grandfather imagined for his children and grandchildren.

And that is freedom.