I’ve been trying to imagine what the members of the Browning Wrestling Team felt when they showed up at McDonald’s in Ronan last Thursday night, expecting to order food.

Instead – based on a now viral video clip – a polite young man tells them, “Browning School is not allowed. We’re not allowed to serve you guys.” And then apologizes with “sorry about that guys.”

The owners of the franchise, Chris and Melissa Crawshaw, later called it “an unfortunate misunderstanding” that was not “a reflection of our values.”

We’re still in the dark, several days later, on what caused the “misunderstanding” and social media, of course, is rife with speculation. Was it based on a prior interaction, inconvenience, a prank?

Or, as one young athlete is heard speculating on his way out the door: “Maybe they don’t like Indians here.” That's spoken by a resident of the Blackfeet Reservation at a restaurant on the Flathead Reservation. 

Whatever provoked the rejection, I’m pretty sure it scalded those kids.

Ironic, isn’t it, that the incident occurred just five days prior to Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

The civil rights icon, born Jan. 15, 1929, and assassinated April 4, 1968, spent his life and ultimately shed his blood working to end the laws in the South that kept Black people riding at the back of public buses and prevented them from sitting at the lunch counters in White-owned establishments more than a century after the Civil War ended.

Native Americans, who make up between six-and-eight percent of Montana’s population, were granted U.S. birthright citizenship in 1924, but their voting rights were left up to the states. It wasn’t until 1954 that all 50 states had finally given Native people the right to vote in the nation that was originally theirs.

For Black people, citizenship was conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1868), and the right to vote for African American males was passed in 1870 with the Fifteenth Amendment. But practically, that right wasn’t fully secured until 1965 with the Voting Rights Act – which still faces various assaults as states pass laws that restrict people’s access to ballots and polling places.

Kudos to Ronan Schools, which set up a hospitality suite for athletes attending the Browning vs. Ronan basketball doubleheader on Saturday night, and to those Ronan businesses that offered food and discounts for the visiting ball players. 

Especially, kudos to the Browning students and coaches for the dignity they showed last Thursday in the aftermath of being refused service. In a statement last Friday, Superintendent Rebecca Rappold thanked Ronan schools, restaurants and community members who offered to feed the Browning teams. "Your kindness, generosity, and willingness to help exemplify the true spirit of community and sportsmanship."

Both communities answered, in their own way, Dr. King’s call to service: "Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?"

We like to say, when reminded of our shortcomings, “we’re better than this.” But when I see a President who spent MLK Day – also dubbed a National Day of Service – golfing at Mar-a-lago before attending a football game, I wonder. When I read that he’s excluded MLK Day and Juneteenth (a day honoring Black history and heritage) from the list of federal holidays that allow free admission to our National Parks, and added his own birthday instead, I’ve gotta wonder.

So many people fought for basic dignities regardless of skin color: to be served a meal in a restaurant, to own land, to sit wherever they choose on a public bus, to vote for representation, to seek freedom from oppression.

Are we better? It's up to each of us to answer that question.