Remembering Dr. King--aiming for the higher ground.

At Carleton College I learned about Martin Luther King Jr. Until then I didn’t know much. But in a class called "Protest Politics and Social Movements," Paul Wellstone encouraged us to read as much as we could that Dr. King had written. I was touched deeply by Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Dr. King was thrown in jail, but while in jail he was still reaching out in love to the White community in Birmingham. He knew that the City would not be desegregated until a coalition centered in agape love made its voice heard.

Through Dr. King I first learned about non-violent passive resistance. Dr. King learned this from Mahatma Ghandi. The philosophy was centered in non-violence. He was tested often to renounce non-violence, but he never did. He continually aimed for the highest aspiration of a human.

This appeal to a higher moral power changed the world—and certainly influenced me.

When I took that class, Minnesota was suffering through a terrible farm crisis. This was the worst crisis in agriculture since the Depression. Even though I didn’t grow up on a farm, I was very familiar with farming. Both my parents grew up on a farm; my dad’s brothers were farmers; some of them went bankrupt in the farm crisis and had to leave farming. It was a very difficult time.

In my hometown of Worthington, Minnesota a movement called Groundswell emerged. It was made up of farmers who wanted to resist foreclosures. They believed in protest, but always believed it had to be done non-violently. It was as if Dr. King had transcended death and came to my hometown.

I decided to go to seminary because I believed that the world could not be changed unless a movement centered in non-violence and aimed for the highest aspirations of humans was created. I believed the church had to be part of this movement. Lasting social change has never happened in the United States unless the church was involved.

I learned these lessons as a fourth grader when my family lived in Kansas City, Kansas. We lived within a half mile of two housing projects, in a neighborhood where everyone was poor. But just a few miles away was Johnson County which was the third richest county in the United States. I wondered then and still wonder why the people of Johnson County weren’t doing more to help the people in the neighborhood where I lived. In my limited fourth-grade mind I didn’t understand why the highest aspirations of the people in Johnson County weren’t being lived out.

For the past week I’ve been reading Jonathan Eig’s magisterial biography of Dr. King. I highly recommend it to everyone. When I was in college, I read everything I could about Dr. King. Jonathan Eig’s biography is the best I’ve read. It is thoroughly and dispassionately researched.

Very early this morning I read a paragraph that is worth repeating. Dr. King had been leading a march through Mississippi. His group had been attached by a mob of twenty-five white men. The attack was vicious. Some within Dr. King’s group wanted to respond with violence. Dr. King responded in a speech at a mass meeting in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

“I’m not interested in power for power’s sake,” he said, “but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right, and that is good.” Blak people comprised 10 percent of the nations’ population, not enough to stand or fight along. “There’s going to have to be a coalition of conscience, and we aren’t going to be free here in Mississippi and anywhere else in the United States until there is a committed empathy on the part of the white man.” He also reminded his audience that white people sch as Viola Liuzzo, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman had sacrificed their lies in the struggle for civil rights, that he would never case white people as the enemy. Black people were going to win their rights, win their freedom, he said—but not through violence and not through hate.” (Page 491, “King” Jonathan Eig.)

We still need a coalition of conscience. A group who is connected by aiming for the high road—looking to bring the best of humans together to confront the issues that Dr. King confronted—poverty, militarism, and racism.