104-Year-Old Fort Worth Woman Says She Met MLK
Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
FORT WORTH (CBS11) - Every year, the direct ties diminish between people on the MLK parade route and life before the civil rights movement.
"We barely learn about it," thirteen year old said when asked about segregation while watching the Fort Worth MLK parade. "Barely."
Fort Worth resident Marilyn Lucille Baker is 104 years old. She finds it very difficult to hear and respond to people and she doesn't walk much, but she is alert and made sure her grandchildren heard about the past.
"When she was up and about she would tell us about what was in her past and what was going on," said her granddaughter Connell Harper.
"She's chopped cotton, she did all types of work people of this generation wouldn't even think about," she said.
Baker was born before women could vote. She grew up in a world with segregated schools and stores and saw people protest when those boundaries were challenged.
"She didn't have to ask anybody about it," Harper said. "She was here during that time. I know she says she met Martin Luther King one time."
"I think they had a march in Dallas, practically everything was in Dallas. And her mom and dad came down. And she say he was just marching down for everybody to see, shaking people's hands and she remembers he said some type of speech."
But like links to the past, details of that day fade with memories.
"I can't remember what she told me he said," Harper said about the speech MLK made.
But Harper does know Baker has seen vast changes in civil rights, including an event she never thought she would witness.
"She didn't think she would ever live to see a black president," Harper said with s smile. "And there's a lot of people that's gone that didn't get to see it. But she did. And it lit her life up."
(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)