FromThe Beginning...

On Monday night, February 6th, I decided I would go to the viewing of Mrs. King's body and then afterwards stay and go to the funeral. The viewing was from 6:30 am to 9:30 am on Tuesday, Feb. 7th and then the funeral was at 12:00 pm. Because there were 4 presidents coming (Bush, Bush Senior, Carter and Clinton) no one would be allowed to park at the church where the service was going to be held for security reasons, which was New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Parking was only permitted off site and then you would be shuttled from the off site place (which was StoneCrest Mall- about 5 minutes away) to the church.

I set the alarm clock for 4:50 am.

When I arose the next morning, I turned on the television to get the weather report so I would know how to dress. As I was watching the news the newscaster said that people would not be able to stay at the church after they viewed the body from 6:30 am to 9:30 am. If you wanted to do both, you would have to stand in line to catch the bus for the viewing, go to the church and view the body, catch the shuttle back to the mall parking lot and get in line for the funeral. Now this was the last day to view Mrs. King's body and already over 125,000 people had stood in long lines to pay their respects. I didn't know what to expect when I got there.

At 6:00 am the news said that already hundreds of people were in line to view the body. I got to the mall parking lot at 6:40 am. Made the decision to forfeit going to the viewing and went to find the line for the funeral. It wasn't because I didn't want to do both, but realistically, I would only be able to make one or the other because of the huge crowd. People who were going to the viewing had to line up at the lower parking lot of Sears and those who were going to the funeral had to line up at the lower parking area of Parisians. When I went down the hill to get to Parisians there were already about 2,000 people in line waiting to go to the funeral and it wasn't until noon!

I waited over 3 hours in the cold to attend the funeral. I thought about all the marches Mrs. King and others had done for me in the elements, in the face of intimidation, the threats, the threats that were carried out, the water hoses and the dogs. I thought to myself the least I could do was wait in line however long it took to pay my respects to our Queen.