Each year about this time, as the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday approaches, I recall with pride and gratitude the opportunity I had some 45 years ago to see and hear Dr. King speak up close and personal.
It was in 1964 or 1965 when I was teaching at Campion Jesuit High School in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Fr. Jim O’Connor, a friend and fellow Jesuit, mentioned that Dr. King was speaking the next evening in Davenport, a 50-60 mile trip across the Mississippi River into Iowa. He wanted to know if I wanted to go with him and, of course, I jumped at the chance.
The setting was one of those typical church-sponsored rubber chicken and mashed potato affairs attended by two to three hundred people. After dinner, when it came time for Dr. King to speak, I remember having to push my chair back and twist my body so I could get a better view of him. He spoke for probably 15 minutes, and at the end when I stood up with the others to applaud, my back seized up because I had not moved a muscle the whole time he was speaking. He was that mesmerizing.
Since I worked in Washington for more than 40 years, I had the opportunity to see and hear six or seven Presidents at various different occasions — ribbon cuttings, swearing-in ceremonies for Cabinet members, White House south lawn ceremonies, and one White House press conference — but none is nearly as memorable or cherished as the Dr. King speech. I count that experience as one of the great moments of my life because he was clearly one of the most important public figures of the 20th century. Not only did he champion the cause of civil rights, but he did it through non-violence, in a way that summoned the better angels of our nature and helped America own up to one of its most solemn pledges.
Most know Dr. King only for his work on behalf of African-Americans, but it went beyond that. As Taylor Branch, author of the trilogy on King, noted in a WPFW radio interview this week, King also fought for a more balanced immigration policy, among other causes, and was deeply involved in promoting the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This law established a more level playing field, away from a bias tilted heavily in favor of Western Europeans to allow more immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and other parts of the world.
Earlier this week, after listening to President Obama deliver his extraordinary speech in Tucson calling us back from the dark side and once again appealing to the better angels of our nature, I couldn’t help but think of Dr. King. He would have been proud.
Gerald E. Lavey
Jerry,
ReplyDeleteI get a daily dharma message from Tricycle in the mornings. Here's their post today. Thought you might be interested:
Martin Luther King, Jr. was, at bottom, a Baptist minister, yes, but one who vision of the social gospel at its best complements the expansive, Mahayana bodhisattva ideal of laboring for the liberation of all sentient beings (“Strangely enough,” he said, “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be”). His dream of the “beloved community” is a sangha by another name, for King believed that, “It really boils down to this: that all of life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
To think MLK was only 39 when he died. I'm in my mid-50s and on a good day I can pick out the right tie.
Best,
Kevin