Editorial for February 9, 2006
By Jim White
Like millions of other Americans, I watched as a mule-drawn funeral coach bore the body of Coretta Scott King to the Georgia state capitol in Atlanta. As state troopers, a mix of black and white, male and female, carried the casket up the steps into the rotunda, I listened to commentators explain that when her husband was assassinated in 1968, then Governor Lester Maddox refused to allow state government workers any time off and become angry when he learned that some flags had been lowered to half-staff. Any thought of Martin Luther King Jr. lying in state in the rotunda of the capitol was unimaginable.
Now, four decades later, what remarkable progress has been made. I couldn't help wonder what Martin would think if he could have witnessed the honor with which his wife's remains were treated. Would he have observed the progress made and considered his sacrifice worth it? I believe he would; and yet, what a terrible price he paid for simple justice.
Regrettably, many readers will identify with me when I confess that I grew up in a section of the country and among people that did not fully appreciate the wisdom and spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while he lived. Dr. King was active in my mid-teen years. Among the circle of adults who influenced me not a single one would have condoned injustice or inequality. They were Christian people who took seriously their relationship to Christ and attempted to faithfully follow in his footsteps. The irony, however, as I observed it, was that as a group they didn't really understand the immorality of segregation. Individually, each was kind hearted. Collectively, they tolerated callous treatment of fellow human beings.
Though this was confusing to me, King demonstrated that he clearly understood such behavior. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, written to answer the concerns of eight fellow clergymen, King observed, “Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”
The eloquence of his language and the clarity of his arguments makes, in my estimation, Letter from Birmingham Jail one of the most powerful statements on human nature to be found in English literature. The tenderness with which he describes how a child's esteem wilts upon learning that she was not allowed the same privileges as her white friends has the same effect upon my spirit as smelling salts upon my brain.
I grieve that, as a class, white people repressed black people. Most of those white folks I knew were good, even Christian, people who were comfortable with the way things were and simply saw no need for change. Many of them strenuously resisted change. Even when they did desire a change, old assumptions about races were so ingrained that they could not be easily shed even though they were exposed as false by the scriptures we held as sacred. People of both races were sometimes surprised to discover occasionally that bigotry lurked in hearts they had believed to be free from such sin.
But genuine Christ-followers are people of good will and are determined to do what is right. As prejudicial impulses arise from the murky depths of unconscious thought, they are held with disciplined diligence to the pure light of Christ's teaching until they shrivel and die. In all likelihood, human nature being what it is, more such thoughts will take us by surprise as they arise in time to come.
I rejoice in the progress made on the racial front in the last 40 years. We must not take such movement for granted or assume that it just happened without noble endeavor and monumental sacrifice from people of both races. As I witnessed the grief on the faces of her children standing beside Mrs. King's casket, I could not help but wonder where our “blind spots” are. In contemporary life, where have we become so comfortable that we are oblivious to the pain of others? For fear of feeling the discomfort of needed change, how are we willing to overlook the hurts of our fellow humans?
I wonder about Virginia Baptist life. Oh, I know things are changing-but too slowly for many. When Mark Croston, the African-American pastor of East End Baptist Church in Portsmouth, was elected second vice president of the BGAV a year ago, I was thrilled. I was equally thrilled that I didn't hear a single comment about his race. Not even a murmur. Perhaps soon an African-American will serve as president of the BGAV, or will serve in the Virginia Baptist Mission Board in a capacity other than relating to African-American congregations. We are already beginning to see African-Americans serving on staff of predominately white churches.
Racial equality, a faint fantasy of those who dared to dream impossible dreams a few decades ago, may actually become reality in our lifetimes. Not in the hearts and minds of everyone, of course. Some people are afraid that if others rise, they will sink. But we are making progress, aren't we?
This is not to dismiss racial prejudice from our minds, of course. In truth, we continue to recognize the smear of its greasy grip on much of American life. But that grip is weakening.
All Americans are indebted to the pair of Kings, Martin and Coretta Scott for their vision, their wisdom and their Christian spirits. Let us not regard them as belonging to one race but embrace them and make them “ours.”
I, too, have a dream. Don't you?