“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” The opening lines of poet Langston Hughes’ well-known poem, “A Dream Deferred.” Hughes’ words capture the pent up frustrations of black Americans striving to realize the American dream.
Those few lines were the first thing that came to mind when I saw the burning buildings and the young people smashing police cars in Baltimore city. Their anger -- a brutal response to the mysterious demise of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, whose death from a broken neck, while in police custody, is still unexplained., even though 6 police officers have been charged.
In many ways what is happening in Baltimore now is a searing repeat of what happened in these same streets in 1968. Angry residents burned down businesses and aimed Molotov cocktails at police; looters took advantage of a city under siege. That riot, ironically, was ignited by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Back then promises were made, hopes raised. But in the ensuing decades promises were broken, hopes deflated, dreams deferred. Residents in the neighborhood suffered police harassment and oppression so extensive that the police department was forced to settle lawsuits with 100 people during the last four years. Even Toya Brown, the so called ‘Hero Mom,’ who pulled her teenaged son from a group of rock throwers, told CBS news, her son and young men like him, had a bad “relationship” with the police.
In Freddie Gray’s neighborhood, one half of all African-American men between 16 and 64 are unemployed, significantly higher than the rate in Baltimore overall. One factor which drove the young residents-turned-destroyers to strike out in a nonsensical fury. I agree that there is no excuse for their actions, but I also know there is a reason. When hope dies there is nothing left to lose. Baltimore native and author Wes Moore spoke for many when he asked, “Do you know any looters with hope?”
Residents from all over Baltimore city took to the streets last week to clean up after the mess. Some formed a protective human wall in front of the riot geared police to stop any would be rock throwers and looters. And two thousand met in the first organizational meeting of One Baltimore. It’s an interfaith led effort to push through police reform policies and economic development that would revitalize the neighborhood.
They put out the fires in 1968, but the embers from that time will continue to smolder –new fires one spark away from history repeating itself. What happens to a dream deferred? Langston Hughes mused. “Does it stink like rotten meat?” “ Maybe,” he ended the poem, it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”
