Today we celebrate the birthday and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was the principal spokesman of not only the African-American fight for civil rights, he became the prophetic leader for international human rights.
We know that King was supported, respected and loved by many, but how did he become one of the greatest leaders in the world. Who cultivated his dreams? King was advised under the mentorship of two African-American men, who under their influence, helped shape his positions; one was Bayard Rustin and the other, Howard Thurman.
Howard Thurman born 1899 – April 10, 1981, was an influential African-American author, civil rights activists and leader, educator, theologian, and philosopher. Thurman was Dean of Theology and the chapels at Howard University and Boston University. Thurman wrote 21 books, and in 1944 helped found a multicultural church in San Francisco, California. It was he who had traveled to India, met Mahatma Gandhi, and introduced the principles of Gandhi’s nonviolent activism to King.
Here are two of my favorite Thurman quotes:
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
“In the conflicts between man and man, between group and group, between nation and nation, the loneliness of the seeker for community is sometimes unendurable. The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance.”
I remember when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. I was 9 years old. While I did not understand all of its ramifications then; I did understand that the passing of this law was a special occasion, deserving of a holiday affair. My mother made all the children in our family get dressed up in our Sunday best. We rode the bus to Canal Street, transferred to the St. Charles Streetcar, sat in the front, and rode the entire streetcar line going nowhere. We were riding to the end of the line and back, just because we could. I stuck my head out of that front streetcar window, smiling a gap-toothed smile, and dreamed of everything.
Ten years later, King would pronounce in his speech “Where Do We Go From Here”, delivered August 16, 1967 at the 11th annual SCLC Convention in Atlanta, Georgia,
“… To offset this cultural homicide, the Negro must rise up with an affirmation of his own Olympian manhood. (Yes) Any movement for the Negro’s freedom that overlooks this necessity is only waiting to be buried. (Yes) As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. (Yes) Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery. No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation, no Johnsonian civil rights bill can totally bring this kind of freedom. The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation. And with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, “I am somebody. (Oh yeah) I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. (Go ahead) I have a rich and noble history, however painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents (That’s right), and now I’m not ashamed of that. I’m ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave.” (Yes sir) Yes [applause], yes, we must stand up and say, “I’m black (Yes sir), but I’m black and beautiful..”
What a beautiful dream. Today, we are indeed, black and beautiful.
Some things are basic to all humanity.
