The years go by, but the memories cling. The nation celebrates Martin Luther King’s birthday on Monday and, a day later, Barack Obama’s inauguration. The two events are signposts in George Collins’ life as a reporter, and as a man.
The nation recalls King’s soaring “I have a dream” oration, and Collins recalls standing in the vast Washington crowd that August afternoon, clinging to a ladder to get a decent view, with a photographer next to him weeping as Collins struggled to control his own emotions.
He’s 83 now. He was with Baltimore’s Afro-American newspaper in that summer of 1963. He spent 18 years there as reporter and columnist and editor, and later spent 23 years as a reporter for WMAR-TV.
For many, King’s speech is a line out of a textbook now, or an old newsreel clip dusted off each year to mark the great man’s birthday. But the raw emotional power of that day, and that speech – the hope that it offered, after so many generations lost to the American racial divide – is inevitably blurred with the passage of time.
But here’s a taste of what it meant. On an Afro-American front page dominated by an eight-column photo of the huge crowd, and a banner headline declaring, “Black and White Americans Joined Hands, Hearts,” Collins wrote on that sweltering day more than 45 years ago:
“It was as if voices from the graves of generations of an oppressed people joined in word and song with voices of the living and those yet unborn, and pleaded with God and man to right a wrong that has gone unchecked in America for centuries.
“Chills raced up and down the spine and tears wouldn’t behave as the voices, like a mighty rush of wind, searched every corner of the Lincoln Monument and floated out on the wings of a hot summer day. Left in their wake was a message still echoing across this land: ‘Let my people go.’ ”
Collins is mostly retired now, though he does an hour’s public affairs broadcast on WEAA-FM radio at 7 o’clock every Thursday evening. He lives in Northwest Baltimore with his wife of 60 years, Eloise. His three daughters and a son are all accomplished professionals.
“Looking back on that day,” Collins said, recalling King’s speech and the crowd estimated at 250,000, “there’s no way I could have imagined the arrival of a Barack Obama. But if ever, as a father, as a journalist, as an American, did I have a vision of this inauguration, that was the moment.
“I’ll tell you what I did have, standing on a ladder with a cameraman from CBS. He was crying like a baby. I did whatever I could to constrain my own tears.
“But what I saw was the hopefulness that pointed to a day, possibly comparable to this. The crowd was so full of hope. And there were so many of us. To go 12 feet, it was, ‘Please excuse me, please excuse me, please excuse me.’ People passed out, and they had to be passed across from person to person to be treated.
“But the unanimity, the mutual respect – it felt like a truly, truly democratic America. That’s what I thought last November, when Obama gave his acceptance speech. People from around the world, weeping with joy.”
But he remembers more than King’s speech. In four decades as a newsman, Collins saw some of best and worst of the nation.
“When I look at Obama on Tuesday,” he said, “my mind is going to go back to that cold November night at Arlington Cemetery, when I watched them lower the body of John Kennedy into the ground, and thinking, ‘This time, evil has totally triumphed in America.’
“And then, in 1968, with the man who had advocated peace and nonviolence, and they slid Dr. King’s casket into that crypt in Atlanta, and I thought, ‘My God, what’s happening to this country?’ And then the funeral service for Bobby Kennedy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“I’ll think of those moments, and Medgar Evers, and Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, and so many of the martyrs, and the moments when things looked so bad. And then, to jump forward to this moment with the new president – well, it’s just a quantum leap that defies my imagination as an 83-year old journalist. I mean, we worked a thousand years for this moment.”
He’ll watch the inauguration from home. He’s moving about a little gingerly these days, on a couple of brand new knees. His family will be with him.
Forty-five years ago, writing about King’s historic speech, Collins described the “black man pleading his case – with the able assistance of his white brother.”
For many, Barack Obama’s moment feels like the natural extension of that sentiment.
