Today is Martin Luther King Day, 2010. Today I like to reflect once again upon the story I heard in San Diego, California, sometime in the early 1980s, from Dr. Robert Coles, of Harvard University, about his conversation with little Ruby Bridges after she had endured the ordeal of being escorted by federal marshals into a previously all-white school in New Orleans, in 1960. As she faced the hostile crowds, the jeering, and even the death threats, Dr. Coles noticed that she walked calmly and her lips kept moving as if she were talking to herself. He later asked her what she was saying. Her response was, “I was saying forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”
Down through the years, Professor Coles has studied children closely and has written with understanding and vision about his findings. If we are wise, we will ponder his conclusions: "Children, if we can listen to them, will tell us of a life richer in moral values than most grown-ups can comprehend.... If faced by the prospect of total annihilation, young people will try in some way to make sense of the mystery and madness of their lives." If we can just listen to the young ones…
--Barbara Smith Stoff
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