MLK, jr, 2018

Martin Luther King, Jr. Holliday

Here is my limited personal contact with Dr. King. In March of 1965 Dr. King invited clergy from all over the United States to come to Selma, Alabama.  A march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama was interrupted by state troopers beating and chasing black marchers. They were marching in protest for the killing of a black man. The beatings and mayhem were reported in national and international media.

About 500 clergy descended on Selma in early March. Six of us from the Bay Area went. The one’s I remember are Cecil Williams, a Methodist. The late Bill Grace, a Presbyterian, the late Don Ganoung, Lane Barton and I, Episcopalians. There may have been more.

In Selma, it was like an alumni day of The General Theological Seminary in New York, I met so many old friends. The Bishop of California, my bishop, James Albert Pike, also showed up.

Walking along side on the Brown Chapel in Selma, I ran into Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy. We shook hands and passed some greetings. They were in a hurry. That evening we crowded into the Brown Chapel for singing and listened to Dr. King speak for about fifteen minutes. His speech was stunning and inspirational stirring us to action. He was interrupted and left the church. The stunned audience was told someone had been attacked and injured.

The next day we discovered that the Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister, was beaten by white thugs outside a restaurant and died later in a hospital. Later that evening, Dr. King called off the march for a day and many of us went home.

Weeks later in San Francisco, I heard King speak at Temple Emmanuel at a fund-raising event. Of course, I listened to him speak on the radio and on TV. I especially remember seeing and hearing him give the I have a Dream speech in Washington, D.C. I am glad I heard him a couple of times in person.

To me he reawakened the feelings of outrage that Black Americans were treated as second class citizens. Their voting was curtailed, especially in the south. They had to sit in the back of the bus, were refused service at restaurants, movies, theaters and even toilet facilities. I remember to this day the feelings of outrage I felt when in a bus depot in Washington, D.C. I saw toilets marked Colored Women, White Ladies, Colored Men, White Men. I met black college professors who were furious because they were forced to ride in the back of the bus. I met black men and women who had to drive for hours and hours because they could not find toilet facilities. In small towns and rural areas. The toilets were for whites only. Schools and colleges were segregated. Tax paying blacks could not attend all white state supported universities.

I remember prelates of the Episcopal Church saying I believe in the goals of the civil rights movement but not the methods. Dr. King believed in non-violence peaceful demonstrations. Those methods provoked white leaders and police into violent. King spoke against those clergy who said white people need more time to get used to desegregation. King’s letter from a Birmingham jail asked, “When would be a good time?”

Thank God King came along and roused the country to fight the injustice of segregation. The laws have changed, yes, and that is a very good thing. But the deep underlying prejudice against people of color still slashes at justice for African Americans.