Jenifer’s Journal: Ancient history

As I went to turn off the TV the other morning, one of the hosts was just introducing a man named Jack Curry, whose book, “The 1998 Yankees:  The Inside Story of the Greatest Team in Pinstripe History,” had just come out.

The greatest team in history? Quite a claim to be making, I thought, considering it was only, what? A quarter of a century ago, Jen! In a moment of breathtaking clarity, I realized, without my knowledge or permission, that my life, at over three-quarters of a century, was taking on a positively centennial aspect.

My personal history is fast becoming ancient. Well, becoming one myself, maybe it’s worth noting that on Saturday morning, a gnarled vestige from ancient days is actually being resurrected: the coronation of England’s King Charles the III is finally being celebrated.

I’m so ancient, I vaguely remember Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, 70 long years ago. All I really recall are some flickering black and white images of people in long capes walking down longer aisles.

I knew it involved princesses and crowns though, so even at 6, thanks to Disney, I already had a frame of reference: Snow White and Cinderella, who managed to become princesses/queens by end of their stories, dish rags and/or dwarfs notwithstanding.

The 1950’s was a Technicolor time alright. Three years after Elizabeth’s coronation, in 1956, movie star Grace Kelly became a real-life princess.

With color television by then competing with Hollywood for dwindling attention spans of my gigantic generation, it began to seem as if we all had roles to play. Daddies went to work, mommies wore aprons, kids went to school and if they got in trouble, fathers were supposed to know best.

Everybody was white, even though I didn’t realize it then. Even Charlie Chan turned out to be played by a white man, and Marlon Brando was a Mexican man in “Viva Zapata!” Natalie Wood played a Native American girl in that John Wayne movie, “The Searchers.”

They made her skin darker, but you could tell it was Natalie. It never struck me as odd, though, because  I figured actors have to use make-up, right?

I was 11 by the time I saw a real Black person play anything at all beyond a Black person who was a singer, dancer, or a servant. “The Defiant Ones,” with one of my favorites, Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, who was very handsome and an actual Black person.

They were prisoners who were chained together, so even their parts were the same size. For the next decade it seemed to me that if there was a large part for a Black person in a movie, Sidney Poitier played it.

By the time I was in junior high school, Black people seemed to have a bigger part in real life, too, at least off and on. Martin Luther King was the name I knew, but there were many others, even White kids — college students — who demonstrated on behalf of getting voting rights for Black people, even though I thought they already had them. 

I mean, there’d been a civil war 100 years before, right?  Really ancient history.

It’s been nearly 60 years since I was a senior in high school and President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the next year he signed the Voting Rights Act.  Strange how six decades later, those very same issues are issues again.

Another big issue has resurfaced, too, even though it seemed almost solved half a century ago. When the Roe v. Wade decision came down in January 1973, allowing American women at least some level of bodily autonomy, it adjusted upward the second-tier citizenship that had been assigned to us.

But wouldn’t you know, last year that decision was reversed, and now we’re pretty much back where we started.

And everyone is very upset about gun safety today, but 30 years ago, I remember they passed a ban on assault weapons, which apparently decreased a goodly portion of gun deaths. Congress, however, didn’t extend the ban in 2004, so, here we go again, except for … Coronations.

Slack-jawed and a little weepy, I watched the pageantry unfold on my TV Saturday morning, and though this ermine-edged ritual, dating from 1066, and originally meant to celebrate the tyranny of bloodlines, is anathema to the global equality we must somehow achieve, it was different today.

For all its hallowed traditions, it was inclusive of all genders, races, and cultures. There were even girls singing in the sacrosanct “Boys’ Choir.” And the emphasis was on service and the stewardship of our planet.

So maybe, sometimes, even with all our backing and filling and arrogance, we manage to get it right, or try to. Just as we have for millennia — it’s ancient history.