My Father Never Hit The Brakes

“It took me many years to understand what my father was really doing that night.”

When I was growing up, we didn't take many vacations.

When our family packed up the car, it usually meant someone in the family had died.

My father had been born and raised in New Orleans, so whenever there was a funeral, that's where we went. The first trip I clearly remember was when I was in the fourth grade. We were traveling to attend the funeral of my great-grandmother, Lillian Brundy, my grandfather's mother.

Dad drove an old Pontiac back then. Those cars seemed enormous. Somehow he managed to fit six children, two adults, blankets, quilts, pillows, suitcases, and enough food for the trip into one automobile. Mom packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cold fried chicken, and whatever else she could prepare ahead of time because we couldn't count on finding places to stop along the way.

As children, we thought that was just part of the adventure.

The back seat became our bedroom. We'd spread out blankets, argue over who got the best spot, laugh until we fell asleep, and wake up somewhere farther down the highway. Looking back, those are warm memories.

One memory, however, has stayed with me more vividly than all the others.

We always left around midnight.

As a boy, I thought Dad simply preferred driving at night.

Years later, I learned the real reason.

Traveling through the South as a Black family in the early 1960s required planning, caution, and courage. Hotels might refuse us. Restaurants might refuse to serve us. Even finding a restroom could become a challenge. Dad wasn't choosing the nighttime because it was convenient. He was trying to get his family safely to New Orleans in a country that didn't always welcome us.

Of course, none of that crossed my mind at the time.

We were kids.

We laughed. We teased each other. My sister still tells the story about one emergency bathroom stop when Dad emptied a container out the driver's window while the car was moving. The wind had other ideas. Everything came right back through the rear window and all over her. At the time, it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

Today, I smile at the memory for a different reason.

Dad was doing the best he could in a world that gave him very few good options.

Then came the moment I'll never forget.

Somewhere near Texarkana, I woke up and looked out the window.

There, right beside the road, stood a huge burning cross.

Around it were men wearing white robes and pointed hoods.

The Ku Klux Klan.

I knew exactly what I was looking at.

Even as a young Black boy growing up in Kansas, I knew what a burning cross meant. America was in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. We watched the evening news. We heard conversations at church and around the dinner table. We knew there were places where the color of your skin could put your life in danger.

The burning cross wasn't some distant image on television.

It was right there beside the highway.

Close enough for all of us to see.

For years, whenever I remembered that trip, that burning cross was the image that came to mind.

But something has changed over the years.

Today, when I revisit that memory, I don't focus on the men in the robes.

I focus on my father.

His hands never left the steering wheel.

He never slammed on the brakes.

He never accelerated.

He never panicked.

He never looked back to see if we were frightened.

He simply kept driving.

As a child, I thought my father was taking us to a funeral.

As a man, I realize he was doing something much greater.

He was protecting his family.

He understood dangers that his children couldn't fully appreciate. If he was afraid—and I have no doubt he had every reason to be—he never allowed that fear to become our fear.

That's courage.

Not the absence of fear.

The willingness to keep moving in spite of it.

I sometimes wonder what became of the children and grandchildren of those men standing around that burning cross. Did they inherit the same hatred? Or did someone teach them a different way to see the world?

I'd like to believe that many chose a better road.

Hope requires courage, too.

As I've grown older, I've realized that many of the greatest acts of courage never make the evening news. They happen quietly. A mother goes without so her children can have enough. A father works two jobs and never complains. Parents shield their children from worries they are too young to carry.

Looking back, I understand that my father wasn't simply driving through the South.

He was driving six children through a world filled with uncertainty while doing everything in his power to make us feel safe.

It took me more than fifty years to recognize the courage that sat behind that steering wheel.

I hope I inherited at least a little of it.

Sometimes courage doesn't roar.

Sometimes courage never hits the brakes.

And that's a story worth telling.