Southern California at the start to 2025 has been the site of extensive trauma. Multiple wildfires are burning large areas around Los Angeles, abetted by fierce Santa Ana winds and a winter drought. Still not fully contained, the fires have killed dozens, forced mass evacuations, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses.
People elsewhere haven’t been immune, either. Even if we’ve tried to shield ourselves from too much media exposure, we probably have heard about the New Year’s Day killing of New Orleans revelers by a disturbed military veteran who rammed his truck into a crowd. It’s hard to remain entirely oblivious to ongoing warfare and carnage in Ukraine, in Sudan, or in Gaza, where a limited ceasefire seems finally to be taking hold.
As someone who came of age at the height of U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the late 1960’s, I’ve had long, indirect exposure to that war’s trauma. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated in Washington, D.C. in 1982, is inscribed with the names of the over 58,000 American soldiers who lost their lives in that war. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese deaths in the period 1965-1975 range from about 750,000 to over 3 million, including both soldiers and civilians. Somewhere around a million Vietnamese survivors became “boat people,” making perilous sea journeys that eventually led many to settle in the U.S.
The more people I get to know, the more history I learn, the more I become aware of traumas that have impacted millions of Americans. The past fifty years or so have uncovered more of the pain and dislocation of the chattel slavery practiced from about 1650 until the 1865 end of the American Civil War in the territory of the U.S. Even after the legal abolition of slavery, discriminatory practices and intimidation continued to severely circumscribe the lives of many former slaves. “Generational trauma” can persist, perpetuated by the lack of respect or opportunity accorded many African-Americans for centuries.
Not all who are traumatized are black. More and more accounts are surfacing of gender-based violence, of violence in families, of mental illness or suicidal tendencies among those exposed to extended trauma. No amount of wealth, privilege, or fame seems sufficient to make one immune.
Today we celebrate a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., considered by many to be one of the most effective civil rights leaders during the 1950’s and 1960’s. King’s life began in racially segregated Atlanta, Georgia in January, 1929. Despite the constrictions of segregation, King excelled in his studies, attended Morehouse College, and later Boston University, where he completed his doctorate in 1955. Beginning in 1954, King also served as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December, 1955, King was tapped to be the public face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, started when Rosa Parks, a black woman, declined to give up her bus seat to a white passenger who boarded the bus at a later stop. King’s oratory and his negotiating skills were important in bringing the boycott to a successful conclusion after over a year.
King became known for his espousal of nonviolence, based partly on the practices of Indian independence pioneer Mahatma Gandhi. In some of his writings, King gave six principles of non-violence:
1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
4. Nonviolence holds that suffering for a just cause can educate and transform.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
6. Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.
King’s dedication to nonviolence was tested early during the bus boycott, when in January, 1956, his house was firebombed while he was away giving a speech at a nearby church. His wife and infant daughter were inside–fortunately they were not hurt. A mob of armed supporters later assembled bent on retribution, but King persuaded them to go home and lay down their weapons. Later, when on a book tour about the bus boycott in 1958, King was stabbed in the chest by a deranged woman. King was successfully operated on, recovered, and went on to lead further nonviolent protests. For years, he was hounded and wiretapped by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. He was jailed nearly thirty times, often on trumped up charges. If anyone should have become embittered or violent as a result of continued and multiple traumas, you’d think it might be MLK.
Instead, as long as he was alive, he continued to work nonviolently for social change. He was not perfect, but his example of transcending trauma through the healing power of nonviolence is one we need to remember, especially now.
Jinny's Occasional Poems 