Reflections on Dr. King

I received a short e-mail from my Dad today and, with his permission, I'd like to share it with you:

Hi everyone,



It seems only right to take a few minutes to reflect on Dr. Martin Luther King on his birthday, especially since it is a day off for me.



As a child, I attended a little Baptist church on the South Side of Chicago. In the late 1950s, our church youth group was invited to attend a service at the Woodlawn Baptist Church, a few miles away, where Rev. King was to preach. At that time, Martin Luther King was a national civil rights leader, but not yet an international icon. (That came after his 1959 month-long visit with Indian Prime Minister Nehru and many of Gandhi's followers and his 1963 March on Washington.) The young people of the (Black) Woodlawn Baptist Church and my (white) church were seated together in the front pews. Reverend King addressed the congregation, not in the ringing tones of his "I Have a Dream" speech, nor in the rousing "call and response" style, but in a quiet, yet powerful voice full of deep conviction. He often focused his warm, kind eyes on the racially mixed group of young people close to him when he spoke of brotherhood, peace, love, and hope for the future. I may have been thirteen of fourteen at the time, but I will never forget those eyes and that voice.



If Martin Luther King had lived, would his dream have come true? It's hard to say; sometimes people become larger in death than they were in life. Still, many people credit the world-wide reaction to King's March on Washington and "I Have a Dream" speech with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the signing of which he attended. Things are far from perfect today, but racial segregation is no longer the law in the United States.



Dr. King was a Baptist minister. Like many other civil rights leaders, he used his pulpit to provide social, as well as spiritual guidance. He believed that we should live our values: Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not bear false witness, etc...  Some say he was idealistic, a dreamer. Perhaps, but to reach a goal, we must first visualize it. King's vision went beyond race, to encompass a world of peace and justice. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, is quoted in an Associated Press article Sunday as saying, "Non-violence would work today, it would work 2,000 years from now, it would work 5,000 years from now."