Dear Martin: December 13 Summary & Analysis

“Dear Martin,” Justyce begins, asking why it seems like he must constantly face people who want to “keep [him] down.” On his way home from telling his mother about Yale, he explains, he encountered Trey and a group of Black Jihad members. Trey asked him why he was so happy, and he told him about getting into Yale. “You’ll be back, smart guy,” Trey says. “Once you see them white folks don’t want yo black ass at they table. They not down with you bein’ their equal, dawg. We’ll see you soon.” Justyce tells Dr. King in his diary that he wouldn’t be so upset about this encounter if it hadn’t happened on the same day that Jared also tried to undercut his Yale acceptance. “All this talk about how ‘equal’ things are, yet [Jared] assumed I didn’t do as well as he did?” he writes.

Continuing his epistolary diary entry to Martin Luther King, Jr., Justyce writes, “It’s like I’m trying to climb a mountain, but I’ve got one fool trying to shove me down and another fool tugging at my leg, trying to pull me to the ground he refuses to leave.” He acknowledges that Jared and Trey are “only two people,” but he can’t shake the idea that people like Jared are going to question his qualifications once he arrives at Yale. “How do I work against this, Martin?” he asks, admitting that he feels “defeated.” In a post-script to his entry, he also asks Dr. King how he should navigate “love triangles,” since it’s clear that both SJ and Melo like him.