“Take care of your mother” was the last full sentence spoken by my father, Isaiah King, before he died in 1990. He was my rock, just as he was to my two siblings, Lucretia and Cranston. However, my mother, Amelia, was the take-charge person. She sounded the early-morning wake-up call, put food on the table, got us out the door for school, had dinner ready in the evenings and made us wash up for bedtime. She brought extra money into the house by washing and ironing rich folks’ clothes (which I dutifully delivered in upscale Northwest Washington enclaves) while also leaving the house to do “day’s work” as a domestic. And after getting us three Kings through college, she went on to land bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and a D.C. Public Schools teaching job, all after the age of 50.
But it was my father, a 10th-grade dropout, who was the family’s backstop. He was the reinforcement that kept my mother and the rest of us afloat, and from straying too far beyond the fields on which we played. Isaiah King was Mr. Dependable.
Yet on a fateful early-spring morning 35 years ago, Daddy knew that his time had come, and that my mother — dynamo though she was — would need bolstering and support. That she needed a strong back to do heavy lifting. A shoulder on which to lean. A hand to hold when she was losing her grip, even if she didn’t like to let on.
“Take care of your mother” wasn’t a request. It was a command.
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Which is where I find myself at this late-September stage of my life and career.
As my dad said, dear reader, I say to you: “Take care.”
Take care of yourselves and one another.
Take care of our city.
Take care, dare I say it, of our country.
Whatever I might have thought and dreamed life would be like as an adult, I have learned the hard way that in today’s world, and especially in Donald Trump’s America, that responsibility for the safety and well-being of others — those whose lives are closely linked with our own, those with whom we are linked by shared humanity — rests with us. Our values and hopes make it so.
Today, I look with sadness at the present White House, Justice Department and Congress — places of former glory in our nation’s capital.
How can it be that belief in racial retreat is alive in today’s Washington? Where policies and programs emboldening the swift, nonjudicial confinement and deportation of Brown and Black faces carry the day, all in the name of immigration enforcement?
Where federal, corporate and academic programs designed to remediate cruel and callous racial discrimination are rolled back, as if the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow don’t still plague us?
Where hypocrisy reigns supreme?
In New York this week, Trump said to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly that “the most persecuted religion on the planet today — it’s called Christianity.” It’s true that unconscionable persecution of Christians exists in places. But Trump, ever the situationist, offered nary a word about another truth: that White American Christians enslaved, persecuted and profited enormously from Black labor. That some White American clergy justified segregation in schools and places of public accommodation, including churches, well into my lifetime.
So sad and troubling to see.
Vast zones of the country glory in the MAGA takeover of America: The persecution and prosecution of political enemies. The crushing of free speech. The shakedown of higher education, law firms and the media. The betrayal of America’s values.
My time has come, but as Daddy said, “Take care.” Despite all that the dark forces of regression seek to do, hold fast. Embrace and defend the Constitution. And, I’m bound by my faith to say, cling to and draw strength from the Scriptures.
I believe, as an article of faith, that despite the work of Trump and his disciples, wrong will be righted in the end.
Even at this late hour, there’s time for forgiveness, and hope that justice will prevail.
Take care of our country.
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