Remembering King

Last updated on: January 19, 2015 at 6:50 am

January 19, 2015 by Frederick Schmidt

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Years ago…I visited the Martin Luther King Center and purchased a children’s biography of King for my six year-old daughter. This led to a collection of King biographies that over the years [grew] in sophistication. When she was nine, she played on a frequent basis with a large number of other children in the cathedral close in Jerusalem. Among her friends was Jamie, a younger Canadian boy, and Alex, an American who had a reputation for being something of a bully. One day Jamie noticed Alex treat one of the other children pretty roughly and, at first, he was inclined to confront Alex. But, having done a quick body-mass comparison, Jamie concluded it was better to remain silent. Lindsay, with her well-honed sense of justice, said to her Canadian friend, “Jamie, go ahead and tell him what he did was wrong. Martin Luther King did — they killed him, of course —- but he did it anyway.” You have to admire her values, although she could learn something about the art of persuasion. (It is probably not a particularly good approach to lead with martyrdom!) And, yet, that is, in fact, the point. King’s efforts to address the social ills of racism were fraught with resistance and ended in assassination; and the struggle that he began is one that is necessarily renewed with each generation. None of this, however, diminished King’s resolve to do what he plainly believed to be God’s will.