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BEGINNING
AGAIN IN 2009 (II).
DIVERSITY: Beginning the Dream Again![1]
INTRODUCTION:
<recorded> “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 men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one
day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons
of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of
brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi,
a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into
an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a
dream today.”
THE STORY OF BLACKS IN
AMERICA BEFORE DR. KING.
To give context to those words, let’s
look for a moment at the world in which Dr. King lived when he first
came on the scene in 1955. Black schools were kept miserably poor
compared to their White counterparts. Seating on trains was always in
inferior railway cars. Seating in busses was always in the back, for
“Colored Only.” Water fountains and restrooms were always separate.
Black people went to the back of restaurants to order food, never
appearing at the front, much less sitting with White persons. And the
most segregated day and hour of the day was on Sunday morning in
churches throughout the South. Cemeteries were even segregated; and in
virtually every public venue, Blacks and Whites were legally kept apart.
And onerous stipulations prevented Blacks from registering or voting.
Further, the notion that a Black woman
or man could work beside a White person was equally forbidden.
Ironically, nearly every White person with any income at all had a Black
woman working in their home or taking care of their children – but their
children couldn’t go to school together!
Even worse, there was built in to the
very psyche of America, an official attitude of racism. It allowed the
law to oppress Blacks mercilessly. It meant second-class citizenship
based purely upon the color of a person’s skin. And it fostered a belief
of moral, intellectual and physical superiority among Whites over
Blacks.
That was the reality of America in 1955,
a nation swimming in legalized prejudice. Into that arena, came Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of
Montgomery, Alabama. He stood like the David of biblical lore, and took
on the Goliath of this nation’s pervasive racism.
And infusing every action
was a dream – a dream of sister-and-brotherhood…a dream of racial
equality…a dream of a nation living up to its charter, its constitution.
To enable that dream, he preached
nonviolence. Nonviolence was not passivity. It was a proactive attack
though the creation of community tensions, which were launched against
the status quo of legalized racism. It was the unwillingness to leave a
restaurant when it refused service based upon race. It was the refusal
to ride a bus system that required people of color to ride in the back.
It was the willingness to go to jail, to face Billy clubs and dogs and
fire hoses, armed only with a prayer and a song.
But there was one other dimension to the
nonviolence which Dr. King preached. He believed that at heart, in the
very soul of every racist White American, there was also the potential
for goodness. As a Christian clergy, he took seriously the plea of Jesus
to pray for those who curse you, and instead of striking back against
those who hit you, turn to them the other cheek.
He could do that because Dr. King
believed in the redeeming power of love.
So once more, let’s look back at those
prophetic days and the dream of Dr. King:
THE DREAMER:
Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King was born on
January 15, 1929 – his 80th birthday would be this coming
Thursday. It was as if he knew that his would be a short life, so he had
to hurry. He finished high school at age 15. He graduated college at age
19. He received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston University
on June 5th, 1955, and was called as a 26-year-old pastor to
the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
As the end of that same
year of 1955 neared, on Thursday, Dec. 1st, Mrs. Rosa Parks,
a seamstress for the Montgomery Fair Department Store in downtown
Birmingham, was riding
the bus home and sitting in the front-most row in which Black people
were allowed to sit at that time. She was also the secretary of the
local NAACP. A White man boarded the bus, and the bus driver, James F.
Blake, told everyone in the row in which Ms. Parks was sitting, to move
to the back of the bus to create a new row for the Whites. All of the
others in her row complied, but Mrs. Parks refused and was arrested.
(It’s important to note that
others had had similar encounters: In 1943, baseball star, Jackie
Robinson, was
riding in the front row of a Ft. Riley, Kansas City bus while in the
Army during World War II. An officer got on board, saw Robinson sitting
near the front, and ordered him to move to the back of the bus. He
refused, and was court-martialed for disobedience, but found not
guilty.)
Back in
Montgomery, when Mr. E.D. Nixon, the
president of the local NAACP, and a member of the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, heard of Mrs. Parks’ arrest, he
called the police to find out why they were holding her. He was told it
was "None of your damn business." He then asked a sympathetic white
lawyer, to call the police station for him. He easily discovered that
Mrs. Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White
man on a bus. Mr. Nixon went to the jail and posted her bond. Then he
told her, "Mrs. Parks, with your permission, we can break down
segregation on the bus with your case." She talked it over with her
husband and her mother; then, she let Mr. Nixon know that she was
willing.
(As a side note, it’s
important to note that she lost her job because of this action; she and
her husband eventually had to move to Detroit so as to get work.)
But on the night Mrs. Parks was
arrested, Ms Jo Anne Robinson, an English professor at the all-Black
Alabama State College, and the leader of the Women’s Political Council,
drew up plans for a one-day boycott of the bus system. She stayed up all
night mimeographing 35,000 leaflets urging blacks to boycott the bus
system that coming Monday. Ms Robinson and her students distributed the
fliers throughout Montgomery on Friday morning.
Mr. Nixon also organized a meeting
of local ministers at Dr. King’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church for that
evening. Though Nixon could not attend the meeting because of his work
schedule, he arranged so that no election of a leader for the proposed
boycott would take place until his return.
The meeting did not go well.
Many were put off by the way one of their colleagues had taken control
of the meeting. Some left, and others were about to leave. Those
remaining, however, agreed to spread word of the boycott through their
sermons on Sunday; then, they would meet again on Monday night at Holt
Street Baptist Church. If the boycott that day went well, they would
decide whether to continue it.
Early on Monday, people
started watching how many were riding the buses. They saw bus after
empty bus roll by. The boycott was a huge success. But would it
continue?
The clergy group who had met
on Friday, met again Monday afternoon. They decided to form a group
called the Montgomery Improvement Association. Mr. Nixon was now
present, and the next decision was whether to end the boycott. Some
ministers wanted to end it as a one-day success. Mr. Nixon was
incredulous. He said:
“What's the matter with you people?
Here you have been living off the sweat of these washerwomen all these
years and you have never done anything for them. Now you have a chance
to pay them back, and you're too damn scared to stand on your feet and
be counted! The time has come when you men are going to have to learn to
be grown men or scared boys.
Nixon
threatened to reveal the ministers' cowardice to the black community.
Dr. King, whose congregation was one of the more affluent Black
churches, spoke up in strong support of the boycott. Whereupon he was
elected to lead the new group, and Mr. Nixon was elected its treasurer.
As an effort at
conciliation, the Association decided to let the people vote on whether
to continue the boycott at the mass meeting that night. The decision was
unanimous. The boycott would continue.
Dr. King's home was bombed on January 30, and Mr. Nixon's on February 1.
On February 21, 89 blacks were indicted under an old law prohibiting
boycotts. Dr. King was the first defendant to be tried. As press from
around the nation looked on, Dr. King was ordered to pay a fine of $500,
plus $500 in court costs, or spend 386 days in the state penitentiary.
Additionally, some churches had purchased station wagons, to be used in
a private taxi service to the Black community during the boycott of the
buses. Liability insurance for their vehicles was canceled four times in
four months, before Dr. King found insurance through a black agent in
Atlanta, which was underwritten by Lloyd's of London. The all-White
police also harassed drivers for minor traffic offenses. An example:
When Dr. King dropped by a pickup point to help transport blacks waiting
there, he was arrested for driving thirty miles an hour in a twenty-five
mile per hour zone.
Despite all the pressures, Blacks continued to stay off the buses. And
if any Black broke ranks, they paid for it. The story’s told that one
white bus driver stopped to let off a lone Black man in a Black
neighborhood. Looking in his rear view mirror, the driver saw an elderly
Black woman with a cane rushing towards the bus. He opened the door and
said, "You don't have to rush, auntie. I'll wait for you." The woman
replied, "In the first place, I am not your auntie. In the second place,
I am not rushing to get on your bus. I'm just trying to catch up with
that man who just got off, so I can hit him with this stick."
Blacks returned to the
buses on December 21, 1956, more than a year after the boycott began.
But their troubles were not over. Snipers shot at buses, forcing the
city to suspend bus operations after 5 p.m. A group tried to start a
whites-only bus service. A wave of bombings continued. The homes of two
black leaders, four Black Baptist churches, the People's Service Station
and Cab Stand, and the home of another Black were all bombed. In
addition, an unexploded bomb was found on King's front porch.
So what happened to the
dream?
APPLICATION OF THE
DREAM.
Dr. King’s last sermon was
on April 3rd, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was
working in behalf of unionizing the mostly minority men picking up and
hauling the garbage of Memphis. He spoke at the historic Bishop Mason
Temple, the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, the largest
Pentecostal denomination in the world.
Because of
their history during slavery in America, Black churches were rooted in
the biblical story of the Children of Israel’s journey from Egyptian
slavery to freedom, to the land we know today as Israel and the Occupied
Territories. As the story is related in the Book of Exodus,
Moses, the leader of the children of Israel, commits an act of
impatience with the progress they are making, and Yahweh God in
retaliation punishes him from actually leading the Israelites into the
Promised Land. Nonetheless, in consideration of all that Moses has done,
Yahweh God takes Moses up to the top of Mount Sinai and from the vantage
point of the mountain top, lets him look over into the Promised Land.
That’s the context of Dr.
King’s sermon, his last, before he was assassinated:
Recorded voice of Dr. King:
“We've
got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me
now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind.
“Like anybody, I
would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not
concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed
me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the
Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know
tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!
“And so I'm happy,
tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
The very next day, at 6:01
p.m., April 4, 1968, a shot rang out. Dr.
King, who had been standing
on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee,
fell to the balcony's floor. A gaping wound covered a large portion of
his jaw and neck. A nation and world were stunned by the loss of a man
granted the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring people of the
world together, was brought down by a solitary gunman with a rifle.
But from the perspective
of that dark moment, who would have believed, that 40 years later, an
African American, especially one named Barack Hussein Obama
(“Thank you, Sheriff Scott!”), would be elected president of these same
United States of America. That part of the dream no longer lives on:
It’s been realized!
Our task now is to not
only to flesh it out, but also to insure that all of our citizens –
whatever their color, whatever their sexual orientation, whatever their
ethnicity, whatever their first language, whatever their religion – that
they are afforded all the rights and privileges of citizenship:
‘…that one day this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: that all
women and men are created equal.’
Shalom. Salaam Aleikum.
Happy New Year. Amen. And Blessed Be.
We will pause for 7½
minutes of brief questions as a part of our Conversation Café. The
Service and Support Council will provide microphones for you to speak
into.
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