"MLK"

“MLK”

            I don’t remember when I first heard of Martin Luther King, Jr.   Those of you who read my recent article in The Atlantic about my engagement with him in 1968 know that he was and still is a very important figure in my life.  My earliest memory as a boy about him is my thinking that he was a Communist, a money-seeking agitator who was duping black people and even some white people.   My earliest memory of him was seeing him on a billboard near Marianna, Arkansas, near my hometown of Helena.  He was sitting in a rocking chair with an older white man next to him, with a caption reading something like “King trained at Communist school.”   As I’ve written in other blogs, I later learned that the older white man was Myles Horton, and the “Communist school” was the Highlander Folk School in east Tennessee.  It was the same place where Rosa Parks was trained the summer before she refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery in December, 1955. 

            Where did I learn this terrible stuff about Dr. King?  I don’t remember anyone sitting me down to lecture me on the dangers of believing that those classified as black were equal to those classified as white.  It simply was “in the air,” in my southern white culture as a boy.  Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I love the phrase “the prince of the power of the air” from the New Testament Letter to the Ephesians.  I breathed in this racism from those who loved me, and from those I loved.  I was receiving it and agreeing with it long before I became aware of it.

            I first really engaged Dr. King when he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in August, 1963.   I was a rising senior in high school, but our school had not yet started back up after summer vacation.  I listened by myself, and I told none of my friends that I was watching it, because I did not want them to think that I was opening myself to such propaganda.  I’m not sure why I decided to listen, but I did, and his speech made a small opening in the wall of racism that surrounded my heart and my consciousness.  First, I was surprised at the number of people who attended – I had believed that this was a very small movement, led by agitators and Communists.  What I saw on that day was far beyond what I had been led to believe.  I told myself that something different from what I believed was happening here.  I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I knew that I would have to find whatever else there was.

            Then Dr. King spoke, and THAT VOICE!  His voice got my attention, but his content kept my attention.    He spoke in metaphors of the American Dream, a dream on which I had been raised, and now he was expanding it and deepening it.   I almost let myself be inspired by that speech, but I had to hold back, because I felt that it would be too dangerous for me to move towards that inspiration.   But, he had opened a little crack in my dividing wall of racism, and I began to see the world and myself a little differently.   Baby steps at this time, but steps nonetheless.  I had one teacher at that time who I felt I could share this shift with.  Her name was Vera Miller, and she was a Jewish woman who taught English.  She heard me, and she suggested that I read “Cry the Beloved Country” by Alan Paton, and it is about apartheid in South Africa.   Even though I had seen and had engaged black people all my life, I met my first black person in that novel, the Reverend Stephen Kumalo.

            I was a senior in college in Memphis when Dr. King was assassinated there, and I have written of that time in the article in The Atlantic – if you haven’t seen it, here is the link:  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/doubting-mlk-during-a-strike-in-memphis/550118/

            As I began to loosen the captivity of race in my life,  I allowed myself to be inspired by Dr. King’s 1963 speech.  We began an MLK Breakfast at Oakhurst Presbyterian in 1985, and ever since then we have used his witness, his ideas, and his vision to inspire us and our actions.  I’ve since come to like two other speeches better:  “The Drum Major Instinct” preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he was pastor – he preached it two months before he was assassinated.  The second is “A Time to Break Silence,” preached at Riverside Church exactly a year before he was killed.  In this latter one, he came out publicly against the Vietnam War for the first time. 

            So, though I never met Dr. King, I give thanks that he was one of the powerful influences that pulled me out of the morass of captivity and on towards the light of justice and equity.  Next week, I’ll have more on his struggles, but for now, it’s “thank you.”