WASHINGTON, D.C.—It was a hot August day 50
years ago in Washington, D.C. The sea of people was so thick
that the whites, blacks, Asians and Indians holding hands could hardly move. Ambulance sirens sounded, yet the atmosphere was peaceful—and freedom was in the air.
“It was a celebration,” said 76-year-old Marie Davenport,
one of the estimated 300,000 people who gathered for the 1963 March on Washington to heed Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic call for civil and economic rights for black Americans.
“We didn’t know what kind of history it would be,
but we knew it was something that would never, ever be
forgotten. So, we all came—black, white, all people. We held hands together. We sang together. We prayed together. And, we marched together. And, I think, on that day, people
felt united. It was a cause this country needed, because it showed people could come together.”
The march, one of the largest political rallies for
human rights in the United States and the stage for King’s renowned “I Have a Dream” speech, was only the beginning for Marie, a black Mississippian brought up to love and respect all people.
“Every time I think about it, it takes me back. But, for me,
it didn’t end there. The March on Washington, for me, probably just allowed me to be more and more convinced that
I had to get out and do something and not just talk about it.”
Marie, who after the March moved to Germany as a teacher with the U.S. Department of Defense, has traveled the world teaching Dr. King’s philosophy, an extension of her upbringing in Mississippi.
As a young child in Claiborne County, Marie began working the cotton field on her family’s farm. At age 6, she was retrieving water for her family in the field, and by “7”
she was picking cotton.
Marie had a 20-minute walk on a gravel road to the one-room school designated for black children in her community, near Utica. As she walked, a bus full of white students, sometimes calling names to the black children through the window, would speed past.
“The racial overtures that I had at that time were mostly from the white kids who rode the bus to school, and they would just say silly stuff outside of the bus to us, like ‘Cows, cows,’” Marie said.
Respect for other people, regardless of color, was
instilled in Marie by her grandmother, Bettie Davenport,
a no-nonsense, strict, yet loving caregiver to the entire
community. “Mama,” as she was known, raised Marie.
Largely due to her grandmother’s maternal role in the community and her family’s sustainable lifestyle of growing and making what they needed, Marie experienced very little hatred from her white neighbors.
“I lived in a community where, even the white people, they were all friendly,” she said. “We knew white and black people were segregated. The difference was we were friendly. There wasn’t this feeling that we don’t like you in our
community. I never had a feeling they didn’t like us.”
While Marie, the great-granddaughter of a slave, didn’t experience racism to the degree King often cited around the South, she was aware she was living in a land of separate and unequal. That became even more apparent when she was 12 and her grandmother told her she could no longer be friends with Deanna, a white girl with whom she played since she was 8. That is also when Marie was instructed to call her friend “Miss Ann.”
“Your parents taught you—black and white kids—‘This is where the line is and this is what you do and this is what white people do,’ and so I grew up under that,” Marie said.
As an eighth-grader at Midway Junior High, Marie wrote a speech on a typewriter her grandmother bought for her. Marie addressed the teachers and students of the all-black school using words that proved she was wise beyond her years. The speech young Marie gave was almost prophetic.
“Yes, time marches on and we, the sons of a cruel and heartless society, march along with it,” she wrote. “The sun promises a much brighter day for tomorrow. We have not begun to realize the blessing our God has for us. We are not resting on our laurels, we will continue to march wherever civilization goes. We the Negro race will be there to give a good account of ourselves.”
Marie did dream of a better life for herself, which included leaving the farm in Mississippi. In 1956, upon graduating from high school, she moved to Toledo, Ohio, to live with some extended relatives. There, she had her own room with carpet, a real bathroom and television. She was a long way from the farm, her shack and no electricity.
“I never wanted to go back to the farm after arriving in Toledo,” she said. “I often tell people I didn’t know I was poor, and I really mean that, because everyone around me lived like me, so I didn’t know that meant, ‘I was poor.’ We had food, and I went to school and I worked in the fields. And, I thought that’s how you lived. I didn’t know anything different until I left the South.”
Marie lived in Toledo for six years and, to her surprise, experienced prejudice—just in a different way. Though everything was integrated—unlike the South—she and
other blacks received “looks” and were treated differently.
“It’s just that my living condition was different, and a lot better,” she said. “The family I lived with was a black family, but they were quite wealthy. So I didn’t sense the same poverty that I did when I lived in Mississippi. ”
After finishing beauty school in Ohio, Marie was
ready to move out on her own. She contacted a friend in Washington, D.C., and said, “I’m on my way.”
She arrived the summer of 1962 and was able to
land a job at a dry cleaning business. She was there one week before taking a job shampooing hair at an all-white beauty salon.
“Even though I had a license, beauty salons weren’t integrated, so black people didn’t work in a white salon. They worked in black salons,” she said. “But, I was always interested in learning how to do everybody’s hair. I’ve never been the type of person who felt limited.”
Not long after her daughter, Maria, was born, she started
working at Albert’s Beauty Salon, another all-white salon run by a Jewish man. The owner wanted Marie to become manager, so she went back to school and did just that.
“Once my employer made me a manager, a lot of whites who lived in the community didn’t like it. They threw eggs all over the shop. They bombed the place,” she said. “But, this went on for a short period. And, of course,
I didn’t quit. It’s amazing how it just kind of subsided.”
It was there in 1968, in that beauty shop, as Maria was shampooing a customer’s hair that she heard the news that
Martin Luther King Jr., had been assassinated in Memphis.
“I tell you, the feeling that night—it was so deep and so—I was horrified when I heard that Dr. King had been shot,” she said. “When Dr. King was assassinated, I was angry. I felt threatened. So, that particular night, I was washing a customer’s hair and I decided I had to leave that beauty salon. Everybody around me that night was white, and I felt that I didn’t want to be there. So, I told my boss,
I said, ‘I’m leaving…I have to get out of here.’”
As she walked later along 14th Street and Florida Avenue,
she was witness to the D.C. riots, her city’s destructive response to the untimely death of the Civil Rights hero.
To recount that experience nearly makes her weep.
“What I saw was smoke and burning and people—it was a very sad time for me,” she said, choking back tears.
King’s death came almost five years after Marie stood, united with people of all backgrounds, listening to the beloved leader speak of justice for all.
“I’m just thankful that I had a chance to be part of that,” she said. “And, I will always carry Dr. King’s method throughout the world—no matter where I go.”
Marie was given the chance to begin spreading his
message beyond the American borders after she learned about the opportunity to teach overseas.
“Because I always wanted the best for my daughter, I
thought, ‘Wow—to go overseas—this would be great,’” she said.
So, in 1974, Marie went to Frankfurt, Germany, where she taught English at Frankfurt American High School and started a cosmetology department. While there, she put Dr. King’s tools to work and ended a case of de facto segregation in the American military beauty salon in Frankfurt, home to some 6,000 Americans.
“Black people had one little area to go to get their hair done and, of course, the whites who went in the beauty salon could go out front and get their hair done,” she said. “So we had a community meeting about that. I personally took a job for one week at that beauty salon.”
Marie’s successful fight led to the U.S. government
hiring a trainer to teach all of the hairdressers to style hair for all, black and white.
“That situation definitely helped change that,” she said.
Marie is frequently asked to speak to groups in Germany about her role in the Civil Rights Movement in America. She continues spreading King’s message.
Through it all, even while living overseas, Marie returned to her former Mississippi home—about every two years—until her grandmother died in 1984. Those frequent trips made Marie realize the value of her connection to her community, so she continues her pilgrimages home.
“I still see it as my home, and I tell people that’s
where I’m from,” she said. “I’m still proud of being from
Mississippi. That is my home. That’s where I belong.”
On her last visit, about two years ago, she brought her husband, Rudi Schneider, a German she met while overseas. She was proud to be able to show him a Mississippi that has moved forward from the place recalled in Dr. King’s speeches as one of the “valleys of despair.”
“When I got off the plane and I saw that the airport had
been named for the Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers—it was
extraordinary. I was so amazed,” Marie said. “This was the beginning of a positive feeling of coming back to Mississippi.”
She visited the 1867-built Second Union Church, the church she once attended and the burial site for her great-grandfather Tom Scott, a slave who fought in the Civil War. His name is listed on the wall of the African American Civil War Memorial in D.C.
Though still living in Germany since retiring from teaching, Marie and her husband often make trips to their second home, in Maryland. Marie takes advantage of the 45-minute Metro ride into D.C., taking art lessons at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and visiting
monuments and memorials that help mark Marie’s personal history. She frequents the monument that pays homage to her hero and inspirational leader.
The Martin Luther King Jr., Memorial, dedicated in 2011, is near the Tidal Basin, the reservoir between the Potomac River and the Washington Channel close to where Marie joined the March on Washington 50 years ago. The statue of a reflective King, noted as the Stone of Hope, juts forward from a Mountain of Despair, which denotes King’s challenge for freedom for all. A wall of quotes by King encircles the statue.
“It’s tall. Dr. King was not that tall,” Marie said of the familiar memorial. “It says something about him—he’s taller than all of us. What he did stands tall. It’s amazing when I come, there’s a sense of reverence.”
Marie was one of 20 March participants selected to wear
a red ribbon during the 50-year anniversary celebration in August. She wishes, she said, she could thank Dr. King for the hope he has given people across the world.
“I think his method of nonviolence stood out among the rest. Dr. King’s philosophy, I think, was the most successful
way,” she said. “I do believe it is a way to bring about change.
And, his message has been carried throughout the world.”
And, it’s working—even in Mississippi, she said.
“I see a change. I’m happy about that. Somehow, I believe we are growing closer together as a people in this country,” Marie said. “We have to be willing to go out of our space to do something to help someone else. And, that’s how we get to know each other.”