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The 2007 Community Faith Celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. was held on Sunday, January 14 at Rollins Chapel. The Rev. Canon Henry L.
Atkins Jr. was the speaker, and his address is reprinted below, with
permission.
I am deeply honored by your attendance here today.
Part of my education took place in England. One of the people with
whom I studied was a Muslim named Hassan Askari. One day I asked Hassan
how he prayed. He said that whenever he remembered that there was God,
that moment of meditation was the moment of prayer for him. I am deeply aware
that in the Hebraic tradition, during the Passover celebration, you remember
leaving Egypt, and coming out of slavery. You remember not only because
you want to recall your history, but because you want to recall that event into
the present, giving you the spiritual strength to come out of whatever kind of
slavery you need to come out of today. In the Christian tradition,
whenever we celebrate the Eucharist we believe that the events that occurred in
relation to the Passion of Jesus are brought into the present, we believe that
we are sustained by that recalling. Today, I want to remember Martin
Luther King, Jr. I want not merely to remember who he was in a historical
sense but to call him to come back to us, to come back to us now, to give us
the strength to move toward that vision that he had. I also want to be
very clear that when we remember Martin, we remember not just one person, but
an entire movement. I can never speak of the Civil Rights Movement
without some personal pain, and that pain is related to fallen comrades.
Many of these were close friends of mine, but some people I never
knew.
One person I did not know was a fourteen year old boy named Emmett Till.
We should never forget the name of the Tallahatchie River. At the
age of fourteen, Emmet Till, who lived in Chicago, was visiting relatives in
Money, Mississippi. He reportedly whistled at a white woman in a country
store and was lynched. He was not just lynched—the rope that was tied
around Emmet Till’s neck was barbed wire, so his throat was cut. He was
not just lynched—he was shot in the head. He was not just shot, he was
beaten mercilessly. He was not just beaten, he then had a heavy weight
tied around his neck, again using barbed wire, and was thrown in the
Tallahatchie River. The people who committed this atrocity were set free
by an all white jury. Within a few months they were describing to
reporters how they had killed Emmet Till.
On this day, I remember Michael, Jim, Sandy, Bill and Caesar, shot and
killed by the Ku Klux Klan. The whole event was televised, so that you
could watch it on television at home. The Klan members, who were tried in
a North Carolina court, were set free. However, I do not only remember
those who died at that time. I remember my close friend Wilbur, who made
the mistake of going into the wrong phone booth in Jackson, Mississippi.
He was a black man. He was taken out of that phone booth, tied to the
back of a pickup truck and dragged through the streets of Jackson, Mississippi.
His lungs were punctured. Ten years later, he was to drown in his
own blood while asleep. My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.
Let freedom ring.
I believe that we can speak of the United States of America before Dr. King
and after Dr. King. In El Salvador, a country in which I have lived and
worked, they say you can speak of theology before Archbishop Romero and after
Archbishop Romero. In this country you can speak of America before Martin and
after Martin.
The world in which I grew up was an apartheid world. I did not grow up
in South Africa. I was born in North Carolina and grew up in Virginia.
In the world in which I grew up, it was against the law to drink from the
same water fountain as a black person. In the world in which I grew
up, it was against the law to go to school with people who were not white.
In the world in which I grew up, it was against the law for me to marry a
non-white person. In the state in which I grew up, for many years, it had
been against the law to teach a black person to read. In the world in
which I grew up, the only alternative to this apartheid view was presented by
the church, and they did it accidentally, not intentionally, because they were
as segregated as anyone else. They did, however, read scripture that
spoke of there being no East nor West, no slave nor free, in Christ. As a
child, I heard those things. In our segregated ecumenical bible schools
in the summer, that black people were not allowed to attend, we sang “Jesus
loves the little children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they
are precious in his sight.” That was the only alternative view that I
ever heard.
I remember when I was twelve years old; a missionary from Liberia came to
our parish. Many of you won’t know what this is, but he gave a slide
show. A slide show happened when you put little slides into a machine and
it projected them onto a screen. In the slide show, there were a lot of
black people. The missionary was working among these people in Africa.
At the end of the presentation, I remember he asked if there were any
questions. As a twelve year old boy I raised my hand and asked him if the
church was interested in evangelizing black people. There was dead
silence in the room. I continued that if we were, I had a black friend named
Daniel who might be interested. Daniel was the son of a black woman who worked
as a maid in our neighborhood. I had grown up playing with him. The
priest reprimanded me, and I was never again allowed to play with Daniel.
Daniel was killed in Vietnam, and I have never been able to live as if
that did not happen.
When I was in the ninth grade, we had a discussion in a Civics class about
racial purity. In the South we liked to talk about racial purity a lot.
It may have said something about our insecurity regarding the issue, but we
really liked to talk about it a lot. The Civics teacher said that we had
no way of knowing whether we were 100% white. I was pondering this
radical statement as I went to my next class, an English class. The English
teacher was a good teacher; she taught Shakespeare. She knew a lot about
Shakespeare, but she believed in racial purity. She also brought up this
subject of racial purity, and when she had finished making her statement, I
raised my hand and said, “In Civics class this morning, we learned that we
might not know if we are 100% pure.” She asked me to stay after
class. At that time she asked me to meet her the next day in the
principal’s office. The next morning I went into the principal’s
office. The Civics teacher was there and the English teacher was there.
The Civics teacher denied that he had ever made the statement. I
was accused of having created a falsehood and engaging in anti-social behavior.
I was told that never again should I make such a statement.
Shortly after that, I had an experience that transformed my life. I was
invited, by a black woman to attend her church. I only knew this woman’s
first name; she was Daniel’s aunt. Now, the only thing that I had ever
seen this woman do was iron clothes. Well, I had seen her wash clothes. I
arrived at her church, and I found out that she had a last name. I had
never heard the name before, and I had known her for at least five years.
I also found out, that she was the leader of a Bible study group. I
had never thought of her as leading any group. I came to the realization
that there was another world that I did not know. I could no longer live
as if I did not know that.
I remember the first time I spoke for racial justice as a young college
student. I was accused of being un-American. I remember being
called a communist. I later came in contact with people who claimed they
were anti-communist and I thought that they must secretly be communist, because
any good thing you did, they labeled communist. If you spoke for racial
justice, they said that was communist. If you spoke for the rights of
women, that was communist. If you spoke for the rights of gay people,
that was communist. If you spoke for peace, that was communist. So
I began to wonder if the real communist had not infiltrated the anti-communist
movement, in order to try to get more members.
I also grew up, however, in a time in which there was a great deal of change
taking place in America. The NAACP was raising legal challenges, and as a
result of the Brown v. Board of Education decision the Supreme Court
had ruled in 1954 that separate but equal schools were unconstitutional.
We began to see the attempts to integrate the schools in such great
cities as New Orleans. We had to send in the National Guard to do it.
Then in 1955, a woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a
white man. And she gave birth to a boycott that was to last for 365 days
in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. She would invite, amongst several
others, a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. to become
involved in that movement. We also began to see black students
organizing. Students organized themselves at such great institutions as
North Carolina A&T. They began to sit in in Greensboro, North
Carolina. There was a young man named Jesse Jackson who served as the
president of the student government at A&T. Some churches were
beginning to address the issue but not a whole lot. I remember the first
march in which I participated. It was in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1960.
The march focused on integrating a lunch counter in a drug store. I
remember that we had all committed ourselves to non-violence, but I had no idea
what that was to mean. I remember as I marched with other college
students (they were mainly black students, but there were other white students)
the resistance we encountered. I will never forget that. I remember
the people who stood and heckled us, but not only heckled us, they spit in our
faces. Men who groped the women in the movement, saying, “Your men will
not even protect you.” I remember the police and their willingness to use
violence at the drop of a hat. I also remember other things. I
remember many college deans saying, “If you get arrested, you lose your
scholarships. If you miss your exams, you can’t make them up.” I
remember very clearly that being the first time in my life that I thought of
the official structure as the enemy. When lynching was legally outlawed
in this country, we moved to a new system: legal lynching. You simply had
to accuse someone of something and have them arrested. If they were black
you would try them, then hang them, and it was all legal. The police
could beat you over the head, they could drag you to jail, they could sentence
you, and nothing would happen.
Then 1963; August, the March on Washington-a march that was not popular.
President Kennedy did not want the march to take place. Martin King made
his “I Have a Dream” speech. Among other things, he said, “I have a dream
that my four little children will one day not be judged by the color of their
skin, but the content of their character. I have a dream today. I
have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people
are created equal, so let freedom ring.” We were invigorated. We
were to go forth from Washington, D.C., and organize and march, get beaten up,
go to jail, and die. We would march in such places as Albany, Georgia and
encounter such people as Sheriff Prichard. We would march in St.
Augustine, Florida, Selma, Alabama, and finally even in Cicero, Illinois.
Two weeks after the “I Have a Dream” speech a white racist response to
the March on Washington occurred. It occurred in Birmingham, Alabama.
White men bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four
young black girls who were in Sunday school. Dr. King was asked to give
the eulogy for that funeral. He said, “They say to each of us, black and
white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us
that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the
system, the way of life and the philosophy which produced the murderers.
Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly
to make the American dream a reality.” “They did not die in vain..” he
said, “..unmerited suffering is redemptive.” Right before he closed he
said, “and we must remember that scripture tells us that a little child shall
lead them.” We would come to know a lot of what Dr. King called
‘redemptive suffering’ in the Civil Rights movement—it was a great struggle.
In the eulogy, however, Dr. King pointed to two important dimensions.
One was that racism was not just individual bias and bigotry, but that
racism was an institutionalized system. He was pointing to the two great
themes that run through our history, which we have never been quite ready to
deal with: the themes of stolen land and stolen labor.
The resistance against the Civil Rights Movement would get stronger.
The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, was pretty open about the fact that
he wanted to destroy Martin Luther King. The Movement continued, however,
and Martin continued to hold up what he called the “unrealized American dream.”
He said we were a schizophrenic people. We said that we believed in
one nation under God where all people were created equal, but we lived in such
a different way. We had, he said, a responsibility to call America to be
America. So we marched on, and we saw the passage of the 1964, ’65, ’68
Civil Rights Bills.
There were several major themes that ran through the thinking of Martin
Luther King. The themes of justice, love and hope were central.
Justice, love and hope would lead us to the beloved community. That
being a community of justice, love and hope. The beloved community was to
be reached by non-violent means. He had been deeply influenced by Gandhi.
As he grew and as he worked, his vision also expanded. Dr. King
came to see that racism was not just a Southern problem. It was not just
something you caught if you were born in Alabama. He came to see that a
third of the blacks living in Chicago lived in hard poverty. He said, “we
must not just address racism in the South, we must address it in the North.”
When that happened, half the movement turned away—the northern half.
All the white liberal money from Boston dried up. They didn’t want
any marches in South Boston.
The most violence that I ever saw directed against Dr. King was during the
Cicero march in Cicero, Illinois. I was convinced that day that he was
going to be killed. He was hit in the head by stones and cut
severely. He had to be taken out of the march. People were furious
that the Civil Rights Movement had moved north.
Dr. King had a great concern about education. He believed that our
technical knowledge had far surpassed our moral knowledge. He believed
that people steeped in moral knowledge were the ones seeking alternatives to
war. And he strongly believed, and I quote directly, that “We live in an age in
which guided missiles will fall into the hands of misguided men.” He said
that the events going on in Mississippi and Vietnam were one and the same.
He said war destroys, war destroys. We know that reality. On
September 9, 2001, 3,000 people were killed in New York City by
terrorists. We responded with an act of war. We have now seen over
3,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. How many more must be killed? We are
no closer to living in peace with our neighbor. Perhaps we are much
farther away than if we had not acted so quickly out of a psychological need
for revenge. “War only destroys,” he said.
He also said, at a time when U.S. presidents were saying something else,
that we should address such issues as apartheid in South Africa. Then Dr.
King did something, which, I think, led directly to his killing. He said
that all poor people should organize together. He said we cannot talk
about civil rights for the black person if we are not talking about the
existence of rights for miners in Appalachia, and the rights of women. He
began to organize the Poor People’s Campaign, and that’s when he lost the
New York Times.
“Injustice anywhere,” he said, “is a threat to justice everywhere.” He
also said that “if a person hadn’t discovered something that the person would
die for, then the person wasn’t fit to live.” He was constantly asking
people, “For what are you willing to give your life?” Many people gave
their lives so that some people could simply vote in this country.
I remember in Alabama watching a 100-year-old Black man register to vote for
the first time. We were willing to die for that. We need to ask
ourselves that question today. I remember the first march that I was ever
in, that march in Lynchburg, Virginia. I was scared. And then we started
singing, “O Freedom, O freedom over me, and before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be
buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free.” In that moment,
I felt free, and knew that no billy-club swinging sheriff could touch that
freedom. My hope, Martin’s hope, was that you would know that freedom,
but we must be clear that that freedom was a freedom to be free. When
Nelson Mandela was released from prison he said, “The truth is that we are not
yet free, we have merely achieved the freedom to be free. The right to
not be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the
first step of a journey on an ever more difficult road. For to be free is
to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of every other human
being.”
The road to freedom and to the beloved community is long. As a people,
we so often fail to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of
others. Jonathan Kozol has pointed out that segregation in the New York
City public school system today is as big a problem as it was in Mississippi in
the 1960’s. The death rate for African-American men ages 20-34 in
Philadelphia in 2002 was eleven percent higher than the rate among combat
troops in Iraq. Forty percent of all black children in this country live
in poverty. Thirty-six percent of black men are in prison or on parole.
We see racist acts on our college campuses, including the breaking up of
a Native American drum circle on our campus this past fall. If you have
not seen the statement “When Good People Do Nothing: An Open Letter to the
Dartmouth Community from the Native American Council” I encourage you to read
that statement. A student publication at Tufts University published a
satirical Christmas Carol that ridicules blacks and campus affirmative action
policies. Over and over again, many, not all, but many, students have
responded to these racist acts by saying that they did not see what the big
issue was. The Tufts Christmas Carol said in part “born in the ghetto, oh
Jesus, we need you now to fill our racial quotas.” No one should graduate
from a college in this country, especially an Ivy League college, who does not
have the ability, in the words of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, “to
decode racism.” If you don’t know how to do that, you are not an educated
person. And you will not make much of a contribution to what needs to be
done in this society now. This past fall, 15 year-old Maria Justina
Mancha was alone in her bedroom getting ready for school, when she heard
yelling in her house. She went into the next room in her southeast
Georgia home, only to find herself surrounded by Immigration officials
armed with everything but a search warrant. She was terrified. This
15 year-old girl was born in Texas, and a US citizen. She was in the
house alone, but her skin was brown, and she did have a Spanish surname.
So she could be rounded up, along with 100 neighbors and taken to jail
for the crime of being brown and having a Latin surname in the U.S.
An ’04 graduate of this College, Catherine Crandall, wrote me last week
about her experience working as a volunteer at a women’s center in the Ninth
Ward in New Orleans. She wrote, “it was like being in another country,
only the McDonalds and the Burger Kings reminded me that I was in the U.S.
I almost could not communicate what I was seeing. Never before did
I so fully realize what white privilege means.”
Recently Professor Cornell West of Princeton referred to the school systems
in our inner-cities as disgraceful. Then he stopped and said, “No, not
disgraceful, atrocious.” Professor James Cone of Union Theological
Seminary in New York has said recently that no white theologian, referring to
academic theologians, is strongly addressing the issue of white racism in the
U.S. Dr. King said that we must learn to live together as brothers or
sisters, or we will die as fools.
After Martin was killed, I was sitting beside Coretta Scott King in a church
in Washington D.C. We were both speaking at a rally. There was a photo of
Martin hanging in the church that I had not noticed. She nudged me and
said, “Isn’t that a good photo of Martin?” I was a little taken aback;
she was still in grief. I looked at her and she was smiling. Then I
looked at the photo of Martin and saw what I had seen so often on the face of
this man. He was not a perfect man, but I saw the great hope in his face.
I saw the hope for America. I saw the hope for the beloved
community. My mind in that moment flashed back to the price he and others
had paid. I thought of my own life, of death threats, of beatings by
police, being jailed. I thought of the cross that was burned in my front yard
that terrified my children. I thought of the loss of friends killed.
Then I remembered that near the end of his life Martin had said “God
could make a way out of no way.”
It was hard work when the movement went north. Hard work, trying to
bring working class Whites, Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans together.
Hard work taking a stand against the war in Vietnam. There seemed
no way. Martin said, “God could make a way out of no way. God freed
the Hebrew slaves by opening up the Red Sea. There is a divine power of
justice at work in the struggle of the poor that cannot be destroyed.” In
that moment, looking at that picture, I realized again how much I loved him,
and how much I owed to him. He made me proud to be a Southerner. He
made me proud to be a Christian. He made me proud to be an American. but
most of all, he made me proud just to be a human being. White people owe
a great deal to him. He was the best friend we ever had.
A rabbi asked his students, “how do you know when the night is ended and the
day has dawned?” One student raised his hand and said, “Rabbi, you know
the night has ended and the day has dawned when you can look in the distance
and tell the difference between the olive tree and the pear tree.” The
Rabbi said no. Another student raised his hand and said, “Rabbi, the
night has ended and the dawn has begun when you can look in the distance and
tell the difference between a sheep and a goat.” The Rabbi said no.
No other students raised their hands. The Rabbi said, “The night has
ended and the dawn has begun when you can look in the face of your brother or
sister and know that it is the face of your brother and your sister, if you
cannot do that, it is still night, no matter what time it is.”
Martin put before us the vision of the beloved community, telling us that we
had to learn to live together as brothers and sisters or die as fools. On
this day, let us reclaim that vision, and let us march again until that hope is
our reality; until freedom rings, as he said, “from the prodigious hilltops of
New Hampshire.”
Let there be peace among us, and let us not be instruments of our own
oppression or anyone else’s. Amen.
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