Student Reflections on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from students in Dr. Brogdon s class

Linda Shroyer – The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It was in 1965 when I was in 4th grade that my white public elementary school in Atlanta, Ga. was integrated. Now, over 50 years later, I think about my young friend Lois who was among the first Black children to enter that school, and I can only imagine how frightening it might have been for her to enter this sea of white faces. I was a bit too young at the time to take in all that was happening in the civil rights movement. So when the opportunity for me to take a class at Bluefield College on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his theology I welcomed the opportunity to learn more about Dr. King’s life and his call to serve others.

Martin Luther King was an intellectual, a theologian, and a minister not lured to the lofty halls of some prestigious university comfortably debating the intracacies of biblical texts. Instead he saw a need and felt a call to get down in the muck and mire of life. Following the example of Jesus Christ, King spent his life (and gave his life) seeking justice for those whose voices had been silenced by the privileged and powerful. At the heart of King’s leadership was his commitment to being a living witness to the love of God. 

Seeking justice might be an umbrella term under which King and other leaders in the civil rights movement lived and worked. Justice is based on the belief that God created man in his own image and therefore all persons regardless of race, gender, or class should be treated with dignity and respect. King’s faith moved him to not only preach social, political and judicial equality, but to put action behind his words. King is especially remembered for his commitment to nonviolent direct action. Again, this is founded on King’s Christian belief that nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship, not build bitterness and hate. Nonviolence is a way of life that chooses love instead of hate. 

King was a leading voice in the civil rights movement. Without King’s leadership in encouraging others to hold fast to nonviolent direct action there would not have been many of the victories toward justice. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott might not have ended up with a Supreme Court ruling that segregated seating was unconstitutional. The Sit-In Movement and the Greensboro Four peacefully protesting the Jim Crow laws might not have led to the overturning of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that mandated separate public facilities for whites and African Americans. The Birmingham Demonstrations with sit-ins, boycotts, protests and marches brought national attention to racial injustices in the South. The March on Washington with its crowds gathered on the National Mall showed the nation that there was massive public support for change. Soon after, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by President Johnson authorizing the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. Can King be individually credited with these and other victories?  No.  However, without King’s leadership and his speeches, sermons, and writings encouraging change through love and nonviolence it is doubtful that the other grassroots organizations would have joined him in a collective front to give voice to the injustices present.

So, how is King’s legacy usually remembered?  He was a man of faith, fighting prejudice through nonviolent protests. He pursued social justice through service to others. He was a gifted orator remembered for his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. One might say he was the poster child for the civil rights movement. But what is lacking from this glossy legacy? How can we see King as a 3-dimensional man who chose to put action behind his words? How can we resist placing King so high on an unreachable pedestal that we are not able to believe that our lives too can be a voice for change even if only in our own neighborhood or community? 

We must remember that Martin Luther King was also a human being. He was not perfect, but he set his sights on living the example of Christ. He never wavered from his commitment to his ministry of love in service to others. King encountered set-backs, he faced criticism not only from the privileged white class but also from some African Americans in leadership positions as well as both black and white clergy. The movement was not without peripheral violence – there were tragic deaths and injuries and sufferings. There were defeats and unsuccessful campaigns. There were times of overwhelming discouragement and personal depression. Yet, despite all this King pressed on. It is his dogged persistence to stay the course, to hold fast to the truth he found in the words of Christ that most inspire me. 

As we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. we surely must take note of the victories that his leadership, which was founded on service and love, brought to fruition. We must also include King’s call in his final years for a “revolution of values” in our society. We must keep as an ideal the Beloved Community that King taught us to strive toward. Let us also temper those remembrances with words reminding ourselves that Dr. King was a man like us who molded and developed his ideas and commitments as he moved through life. When faced with obstacles, he made adjustments just as we must do. He refused to give in to external pressures to compromise his faith. He refused to lower himself into the sinkhole of bitterness and hate. He embraced the agape love of God and did his best to walk in love as a living witness of its power to others. We can always be inspired by his “I Have a Dream” speech, but on a day to day basis I want to remember these words: “Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Mimi Merritt – Where Do We Go from Here: A Way Forward

Probably because I seem to be talking always these days about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone asked me recently whether I thought anyone today is filling his shoes. This is a question I’ve been pondering since long before this inquiry, and the answer for me had persisted in being a “no.” Just exactly what it would take to fill his shoes, however, is a subject I have explored more than ever this spring in a class I took at Bluefield College with Dr. Lewis Brogdon.

I have learned about the way in which Dr. King tightly wove the 20th century civil rights movement of African Americans into an arc of the moral universe, an arc that he reminded audiences continuously was always bending toward justice, from the slavery era beginning 400 years ago straight through the late 1960s when Dr. King’s life ended. As I learned how Dr. King’s own thinking evolved to expand the parameters of a movement that began with desegregation as a goal, it inspired me to consider more closely how leaders and activists today continue his work.

As a white child of a South at war over the massive school integration in the early 1970s, I saw many white friends abandon public school during our seventh-grade year for the brand-new private academy that enrolled no students of color. Today, five decades later, conversations about race seem to have become even more taboo, so it was an epiphany to enjoy open class discussions in which students both black and white shared their personal experience of this turbulent, transitional time in America.

If today’s conversations about our nation’s history of slavery and racism can seem as disturbingly tense today as 50 years ago, are there voices today to help us navigate peacefully and lovingly toward reconciliation, as Dr. King earnestly attempted? I could identify several talented, intelligent, even charismatic voices who address issues of poverty, injustice, and racial and economic inequality, such as Bryan Stevenson, a hero of mine, author of Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption. Stevenson founded and serves as executive director of the Equal Rights Initiative, which established the National Monument for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., to honor the more than 4,400 African Americans lynched between Reconstruction and the beginning of the civil rights movement. He is a gentle-spoken advocate who has worked tirelessly for reform in the justice system. 

I thought of Ta-Nehisi Coates, an outspoken journalist, public intellectual and author of the award-winning book Between the World and Me, whose commentary on social issues like white supremacy that affect blacks in the U.S. reaches a wide audience. Many others come to mind: Van Jones, a Yale Law School graduate, news commentator, former advisor to President Obama, and co-founder of several non-profit organizations including the Dream Corps and most recently the REFORM Alliance, newly organized to advance criminal justice reform; public intellectuals, such as Cornell West and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., whose voices are augmented by their positions at elite universities; literary voices such as Pulitzer- and Nobel-prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, who coined the phrase “first black president” for Bill Clinton and who has long been vocal about racism in the U.S., and Colson Whitehead, whose Underground Railroad, which imagined an actual railroad underground on which escaped slaves were transported to a series of different utopian communities, each with good intentions yet misguided solutions, won the 2016 National Book Award and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 

I thought of President Barack Obama himself, certainly noteworthy as the first (real) black president and one who addressed America’s race issues as president in eloquent rhetoric and who continues to publicly address America’s democratic values.

I realized that something significant may be missing from all these remarkable possibilities, something potent and essential, something that Dr. King possessed. It was his gift, in addition to his talents these others possess: charisma; communication skills that included eloquence in speaking extemporaneously as well as beauty in the written word; organizational abilities; an appreciation of building a narrative with which different audiences could identify; and a passionate commitment to a mature system of moral values. I realized that Dr. King’s gift was his profound religious faith in concert with an intellectual understanding of that faith, which was grounded in a solid theological scholarship. I gained this realization as a result of taking this course on Dr. King’s life and theology this semester.

His legacy unquestionably includes the cultural messages that he sought to live by and that he wove so distinctly and so prolifically into his speeches and his writings and his interviews, the phrases that encoded his mission – “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” “We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” and “We are in dire need of creative extremists.” He spoke repeatedly about non-violent direct action as he cautioned that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek, and his thinking evolved to understand that desegregation was not enough, that what was required was integration, the beloved community, which we are compelled to work toward because, as he told us, it is what God commands us to do. Simple truth; God’s truth.

These cultural messages were informed by his religious faith and by his intellectual ability to grow in his thinking and to re-evaluate his strategies. The essential interplay between his Christian morality and the universal ideals of justice and equality were the secret to his greatness as a leader and the reason his shoes are difficult to fill.

One would have to be a prophet, speaking truth to power. In Dr. King’s last three years, he had expanded his message from desegregation for blacks to integration, from integration of blacks and whites to a battle against the debilitating poverty plaguing poor whites as well as blacks. This attack targeted the very system of capitalism so entrenched in the U.S. economic model, and it attacked the nation’s involvement in Vietnam, which King called immoral and saw as a monstrous drain of resources needed desperately to heal a “sick society.” Today, one filling Dr. King’s shoes would demand an overhaul of the system, demand an exploration of the relative dangers of capitalism, and demand that we cease the exploitation of third world countries and regions like Appalachia in the U.S. that look like third world countries. This person would be insisting that our racial problems still exist and must be addressed, and this person would be proclaiming that problems of inequality affect poor whites as well as blacks, so we may as well unite in the fight against a system that oppresses the underdog.

These voices exist, yes, but they seem to come mostly from unsung directors of non-profits who quietly and beautifully execute their soul-healing tasks, and from politicians who loudly and abrasively speak out but who do not seem to be grounded in a religious conviction.

The church seems to have gone silent again, or strangely vocal in other ways, as a generation of young people grow disgusted by the hypocrisy of white evangelicals backing someone like President Trump, whose stances seem to violate essential commandments of the church.

In an April 19, 2019, Sojourners web article entitled “The Church Needs to Recapture Its Prophetic Zeal,” by Unitarian Universalist Association President the Rev. Susan Frederick Gray, Gray writes about declining religious affiliation in the U.S. and laments that the church can be a community that teaches one to take risks for what is right, and to not to be afraid to speak to one’s values.

What is actually happening in many churches, she writes, is the opposite, just as Dr. King had perceived 60 years ago, when he warned us, as she quotes: “ ‘If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority…If the church does not participate actively in the struggle for peace and for economic and racial justice, it will forfeit the loyalty of millions and cause [people] everywhere to say that it has atrophied its will…’ .”

She reminds us of a truth Dr. King was unafraid to speak when he bemoaned that the church needed to free itself from “ ‘the shackles of a deadening status quo.’ “ Gray writes that we now live in a time that King had described: “ ‘where reactionary forces seek to double down on the failing status quo through the rhetoric of scarcity, isolation, and walls. In response, a prophetic faith kindles the imagination of humanity helping us to create new pathways to respond to the challenges of our time that are rooted not in fear, but in possibility and the values of justice and peace.’ ”

So who, then, if anyone, is answering this call today? Who is courageously speaking truth to power, in the prophetic tradition of the Bible? 

In class, we talked often about Dr. King’s prophetic tradition, and the challenges he faced in opposition not just from white government and religious leaders, but also from conservative African American clergy, and from activists like Malcolm X who attracted young blacks who had grown restless with nonviolent resistance in favor of a more aggressive Black Power movement. Dr. King’s discipline in persisting valiantly on a nonviolent approach influenced by his study of Gandhi is difficult to imagine in a world today in search of the next dramatic headline.

Yet examples do exist of many who toll diligently in the tradition of Dr. King: those I had considered earlier – Bryan Stevenson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Van Jones, Cornell West, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Toni Morrison, and Barack Obama, in the secular world – as well as a generation of progressive clergy who dare to assume the mantle of Dr. King, including the Rev. William Barber of North Carolina. 

Relatives and friends in North Carolina have proudly participated in the Moral Mondays protests that Barber, then-president of the North Carolina NAACP, organized with other progressive religious leaders. These protests that took place weekly in Raleigh began in 2013 to protest reactionary Republican policies and were styled after Dr. King’s nonviolent resistant approach.  I saw Dr. Barber deliver a resounding message at the 2016 Democratic Convention in which he addressed wages and labor conditions, gun control, homeland security, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, criminal justice reform, immigration, and the industrial military complex. In listening to his address again on YouTube recently, I heard messages like the following: “Jesus, a brown-skinned Palestinian Jew, called us to preach good news to the poor, the broken and the bruised and all those who are made to feel unaccepted.” And I heard another quote: “I am worried by the way that faith is cynically used by some to serve hate, fear, racism and greed.”

In short, his message sounded more than a little like that of Dr. King. That Dr. Barber earned a master’s in divinity from Duke University, where he was a Benjamin Mays Fellow, places him among other progressive younger religious leaders today in the tradition of Dr. King. At Duke he studied Reinhold Niebuhr, “whose concept of Christian realism led Barber toward a practical theology, a way of faith that is rooted in the struggles of common people and seeks justice and mercy against unfavorable odds,” according to an article published last year in The New Yorker: “The Southern Strategist: The Reverend William Barber’s effort to build a populist interracial coalition against poverty,” by Jelani Cobb, (May 14, 2018).  An interracial coalition against poverty? It sounds like Dr. King. In addition, Dr. Barber connected with two progressive theologians, Paul Tillich of Union Theological Seminary and Harvard, known for his teaching of how to practice philosophy publicly, and James Cone, known for black liberation theology and whose book Martin & Malcolm & America we read several chapters from for class.

In a speech at the 50-year commemoration of Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis, at the Lorraine Motel, Janis Cobb in the “The Southern Strategist” writes that Dr. Barber warned: “’The Bible says woe unto those who love the tombs of the prophets,’” a stirring reminder of the need for prophets to speak truth to power, which any study of Dr. King would insist upon.

Further evidence that a contemporary religious leader such as the Rev. Barber continues the tradition of Dr. King is found in Cobb’s summary of his work. With the Rev. Liz Theoharis, he co-directs the Kairos Center at Union Theological Seminary, leading an effort to revive “King’s most radical project: the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign,” writes Cobb. The project is called the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and it demands federal and state living-wage laws, equity in education, an end to mass incarceration, a single-payer health-care system, and protection of the right-to-vote. Liken that to the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, planned by Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and which took place after his assassination, that demanded full employment, a guaranteed basic income, and access to capital for small and minority businesses. People traveled to Washington, D.C., from across the country to stay six weeks in the summer, in tents on the National Mall in a camp called Resurrection City.

In Dr. King’s speech, “Our God is Marching on!”, which we read for class, is found the following quote linking the plight of poor whites with blacks in oppression by the privileged class: “They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity; they segregated southern minds from honest thinking, and they segregated the Negro from everything.” In a telephone exchange with Cobb, more than 50 years later, Dr. Barber tells her: “’Poverty has been so racialized…that most people don’t even know that, in raw numbers, the majority of poor people are white.’ “

In considering the nexis between religion and good government, of which Moral Mondays offer one example, I think of our class reading from Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking Truth to Power, by J. Deotis Roberts. In Chapter 10, “The Relationship of Church and State in Bonhoeffer and King,” Roberts explains the way in which King saw government as potentially an agent for positive moral change against collective evil: “King believed in strong and aggressive leadership by governmental authorities to sponsor civil rights and social justice.” It is important to note, however, that the thought is completed in this way: “…when government is on the side of injustice, King believed Christians had the responsibility to apply moral pressure to compel unwilling authorities to yield to the mandates of justice.” 

Likewise, when churches find themselves in “the shackles of a deadening status quo,” it is time to speak truth. Clergy like Dr. Barber continue in this vein, providing a way forward. I continue to ponder the question. As a student of the First Amendment, having worked as a journalist and having taught journalism to college students, I fervently support freedom of religion and Thomas Jefferson’s interpretation of it as articulated in his 1801 Letter to the Danbury Baptists, as separation of church and state. Yet I feel perhaps a soul force which informs me that there is a higher power, a power that prevails, and that even in a democratic nation we desperately need the voice of truth, the truth of love, the truth that is independent of advertising dollars. Our God is marching on.

Susie Green – From the Movement to the Classroom: A Personal Reflection

Participating in the course on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rekindled and refined my perspective on issues about race. When I heard about the class, I knew I had to take it because this movement was a part of my formative years. I recall the painful weeks and months after the assassination of King. I remembered that I joined the Poor People’s Campaign in New York where I personally saw Coretta Scott King and Ralph Abernathy continue King’s work. So I went from the movement to the classroom.  

As an African American growing up in the 1950s and 60s, I discovered that the conversations and in-depth discussions among white students during this class made the shouts and echoes from the past seem louder in my mind. During reading assignments and video clips memories soared sometimes rampant as I could recall events long past and thought to be forgotten.  However, the pronouncement of negative reflections was somehow calmed as I read about the intellectual influences that Mays, Thurman, Gandhi, and even Malcolm X, had on shaping King’s view on non-violence. Most amazing to me is how the course readings and class discussions unfolded the greatness of how God orchestrated King’s every move. Dr. King’s analysis of what and why these great men believed as they did position him to become the most important and powerful leader of social change in the twentieth century. Any remembrance of King is a reminder of the power of non-violence even in his brief life. 

King advocated nonviolence because he believed it to be the most effective movement for social change. Not that there was never a need for violence, but that violence was not a solution and if used, could only serve to bring attention to a cause. King reflects, “…My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil…a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence that the inflictor of it.”

   The most thought-provoking analysis can be summed up in five points King emphasized in the philosophy of nonviolence.

• Nonviolence is “the way of the strong man” – Passive resistance does not mean doing nothing about an unfair situation, but rather seeking a mental change by peaceful example and not by physical force.

• Passive resistance seeks to persuade the opponent that he is incorrect in his reasoning. Demonstrations and boycotts “are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation.” 

• Tension between races results not from race per se, but “between justice and injustice…between light and darkness. 

• Nonviolent demonstrators are willing “…to accept suffering without retaliation …”

• Perhaps, the most deeply rooted of all five points is that nonviolent resistance includes not only avoiding physical force but also avoids”…internal violence of spirit.”

There is not a time that I am not filled with emotional pride when I hear Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Beneath the pride, however, I continue to find myself touched by the forces of disillusionment as I recall racial innocence and social judgment during the 50s and 60s when I was growing up. Yet, this course has undoubtedly helped me to realize that we remember and memorialize people and events that changed life in America—in the world—not to keep the fire of hatred alive, but to remind us of the undying strength of the human spirit to be equal and to be free—regardless of race or socio-economic status. The King course raised my level of understanding of the philosophy of nonviolence and encouraged my faith in humanity. Candid conversations such those held in the King course serve as a necessary social advocacy which is to stir within each of us an internal burning flame of fresh aspiration for how we can make social justice a fairer deal for everyone.      

Mickey Pellillo – King’s Message to Me

King left behind a valuable legacy for us all. His teachings and example of effective leadership, and his deep insights into Christianity, love, justice and nonviolence are priceless gifts relevant in all times. But my focus is on what he left behind for me. I took this class for very personal reasons. When I read that a religion and history class was being offered that would focus on King as a Christian leader, I came looking for some kind of spiritual renewal. I came hoping King could show me how to be a better Christian and help me connect back to organized religion, something that I had felt distanced from for several months, maybe even years. I think maybe I was also looking for some way to make a difference in what often feels like a bitter divided world. Race issues matter to me. I am a white grandmother to two biracial grandchildren for whom I would “move heaven and earth”.  I come from a background of social work and education, but felt I had moved away from social activism too much in recent years. King has certainly called me to lots of introspection and action this semester. He has left me with a better understanding of what it means to be “good” Christian. And, he has called me to act.

I feel much of what we read this semester gave me a better understanding of what it means to live a Christian life. From King, I deepened my understanding of love. In The Drum Major Instinct, King tells us that Jesus calls us to be great by being a servant, to be first and out front by having a heart full of grace, to be first in love, moral excellence and generosity (265), he says. King says that it is only through love that we can really create change, find justice and equality and that this love must be self-sacrificing, Christ-like and for all people, especially our enemies. I love the idea King expressed when he said I can never be what I am meant to be until you are all you are meant to be. We are so interconnected that we must love one another. (Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution). We really have no choice; we have what King calls a “moral obligation.”   I learned the danger of being silent. To be silent in the face of injustice is to be a part of the problem, which therefore means I am not operating out of love. I found very meaningful King’s thoughts about all people being made in the image of God. I don’t think I have ever really understood this idea. But King emphasizes the sacredness of each human in God’s eyes. I think he believes that all men are in the image of God whether or not they believe in that God. How inclusive! How loving! I have learned that to be a good Christian is to be “radical” like Jesus. Christianity comes with a high cost. I must be willing to give of myself, and give deeply, even when those close to me might disagree, or look at me funny, or “unfriend” me.  Being a “good” Christian is not easy. I am only beginning to understand what is expected of me. But thanks to King, I am further along in my journey than I was just a few weeks ago.

And thanks to King, I have been called to take action. I have left class almost every evening overwhelmed with frustration about just how big the machinery of government is, how complex social systems are, and just how mean, depraved, selfish (my descriptive word changes depending on what we discuss in class) man can be. I understand why King came to think that his dream had turned into a nightmare. Most class meetings, I saw little hope for me as an individual having much effect on an out of control system that seems to have a life of its own. But King’s belief that change only comes through persistent and consistent direct action called to me. Because of King, I have made small, and yet for me very significant, changes in my life. I am trying to use my voice, my feet, and my body to move towards a “just goal” (Social Organization of Nonviolence). Since class started, I have become involved at the Wade Center (a local afterschool program that tutors, feeds and offers Christian support for local underserved children). My first step was to help stuff bags with weekend food for the children. I was so disheartened that the bags contained only prepared food, much of it really nutritional junk, that I began taking apples or oranges each week to be included in the bags. Now I am also involved in helping the staff and children build and plant a vegetable garden and I am on the substitute teacher list. I have also used my voice (and my ears) to have several conversations with my black classmates, a young friend of my daughter’s who is also black and with numerous white friends about what I have learned, questions I still have, and current issues.  These conversations with my husband have led us to decide we are creating a local foundation to provide aid for disadvantaged youth in our area.  I am trying to look upon ALL people with kinder eyes, looking for ways in which each might be “in the image of God.” I go out of my way to make eye contact and acknowledge strangers with a smile (not a small thing for an introvert), especially those who appear “different” from me. And my heart has been opened to listening to God. King has renewed my interest in studying the Bible; I am actually reading it again. Finally, I have attended a couple different churches, though I am nowhere near coming to terms with organized religion yet. 

I have learned much from studying King this semester, just a few of which I have touched on here. I pray that the actions he has called me to will help in some small way to make the world a more loving just place especially for my grandchildren and I pray that my deeper understanding of Christian living and my renewed interested in knowing God will help me to be a kinder, more just and loving person.

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