Celebrating a message of hope



Several years ago, I stood before a congregation in Galveston, Texas, to deliver a sermon about the teachings of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

As I recited the words from his celebrated “I have a dream” speech, my voice grew tight, and I realized my vision was growing blurry. I was nearly overcome by emotion.

It dawned on me as I stood there that I was just then beginning to grasp the impact of his death.

The man was 39 years old when he died. What else might he have accomplished had he managed to survive? How much different might the world be today?

I was thinking about that as I struggled through the words of his speech.

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair,” he said. “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

He repeated the assertion of this nation’s founders that all men were 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 down together at the table of brotherhood,” he said.

He hoped for a day when racism would be a thing of the past.

“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,” he said.

He hoped for a day when the nation could transform discord into brotherhood. He called for freedom from the Alleghenies of Pennsylvania to the curvaceous slopes of California, from the mountains of New York to Stone Mountain in Georgia and Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.

“Let freedom ring,” he said, “from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.”

The man clearly had a way with words.

When King died in April of 1968, I was 14 years old, the same age as my son is today. I can’t say that I fully appreciated the gravity of what had happened.

I knew of King. I had heard about some of his speeches, but I did not begin to fully appreciate his message until years later.

For me, a white kid growing up in Indiana in the 1960s, what King had to say didn’t have much significance.

But on that day several years ago as I stood before the congregation and read King’s words, it all started to come together.

This man wasn’t just working for the advancement of his own race. He was working for the advancement of every human being.

And he wasn’t calling on the oppressed to hate their oppressors. He was preaching a message of tolerance and love.

“We don’t have to argue with anybody,” he said in his final speech the night before he died. “We don’t have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don’t need any bricks and bottles; we don’t need any Molotov cocktails. ...”

When he died, King was visiting Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers.

During that final speech, he recalled a time when he had been stabbed during an appearance in New York, and he noted that physicians had suggested that the blade came so close to his aorta that a sneeze would have killed him.

He recalled the time he spent in the hospital and the many letters he received. The one he remembered most, he said, came from a ninth-grader at White Plains High School.

“While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl,” she wrote. “I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

King told the sanitation workers that he, too, was glad he hadn’t sneezed. If he had, he said, he would have missed the sit-ins at lunch counters in 1960. He would have missed the passage of the civil rights bill in 1963, and he wouldn’t have been around in August of that year to tell the nation about his dream.

But by that night in 1968, he said, it did not matter so much.

“Because I’ve been to the mountaintop,” he said, “and I don’t mind.”

Like anybody, he said, he’d like to have a long life, but he wasn’t worried about that. He said God had allowed him to climb the mountain and to see the promised land.

“I may not get there with you,” he said, “but I want you to know that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And 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 next day, King was shot on the balcony outside his motel room. He was pronounced dead about an hour later.

It would be understandable for us to mourn our loss. That assassin’s bullet nearly 42 years ago cut short the life of a man who had a vision for a better future for all of us.

That’s what I was thinking about as I stood before that congregation with tears in my eyes.

But I continue to remind myself that Monday’s holiday is not an occasion for mourning. It’s a day for celebrating a message of hope.

• Kelly Hawes is managing editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at 574-732-5155 or kelly.hawes@pharostribune.com.