As the nation celebrates the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who would have turned 77 Sunday, The Post talks with people in Colorado and across the nation about his legacy. Some marched with him; some worked at his side; others never met him but found their lives changed by the movement he led. Their memories and commitment to continue his work for social justice remind us of the profound effect of King’s life and message.
TAYLOR BRANCH
He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Parting the Waters,” “Pillar of Fire” and “At Canaan’s Edge,” which make up a three-volume history of the civil rights movement during King’s years. Branch recalled one poignant moment of King’s extraordinary life.
“On his last birthday, when he was 39, he came to a big staff meeting. His staff was in revolt against his plans to do the Poor Peoples Campaign. Some were even accusing each other of trying to co-opt and displace King and his nonviolence movement.
“There were about 50 people in the room, and after King made his presentation, he wanted to leave because there was so much tension.
“But Andy Young said, ‘Stop. Don’t let Dr. King leave.’ They sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. He started smiling, a very big smile, and then broke into a big, rumbling bass laugh when they started bringing out these ridiculous gifts for him.
“They gave him these potato sticks, to serve as shoelaces, because he expected to soon be in jail and he always complained they took away his shoelaces.
“They also gave him a coffee mug that said, ‘Help Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, leave your pennies and change here.’
“He was laughing at all that. It was near the end of his life, and basically he made this little speech about how much it meant to get the necessities of life from his staff. We forget he had moments like that.”
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GIL CALDWELL
The retired Denver minister served as master of ceremonies at a Boston rally when King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference confronted the school system over racial inequality.
“There was an authentic humility about him, in public and beyond. He avoided the trappings of success, and I think we need to revisit this, given our heavily economically successful world, from the pulpit to the pew.
“The prosperity gospel is being preached on TV and from the pulpit today, which talks of individual financial success and has no connection to the human journey to justice.
“He understood that journey, and wasn’t caught up in individual financial success.”
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DOROTHY COTTON
Now a resident of Ithaca, N.Y., Cotton was
director of education for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960s.
King’s legacy, says Cotton, is both empowering and prophetic.
“He saw what our problem was and is: that our technological advances far outdistance our ability to know how to live together on the planet.
“With the state of the world today … we see the dire need to heed his call. Yet I see us resisting this call to learn how to live together.
“To make this happen, we must have a massive transformation of consciousness. … Simple though it appears, the greatest call is to learn to live in acceptance, understanding and in appreciation for all the fantastic and wonderful diversity on the planet.”
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JOHN DOAR
Now an attorney in private practice in New York City, he was a
key Justice Department official in the South during the civil rights movement.
In 1962, Doar stood at the side of James Meredith, desegregating the University of Mississippi. He won convictions for the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, successfully prosecuting Klansmen in what was dubbed the “Mississippi Burning” trial.
Doar still remembers the power of King’s charisma: “I went out to see him in Chicago when he was working on a march. He was in an apartment there on the South Side. … He was a very attractive personality.
“The young people were all around him, and he was able to engage them. He wasn’t egotistical, just down to earth. He had a good laugh and a good sense of humor.”
Doar also observed the 1965 march from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery, Ala. “He was just modest, and genial – not someone out campaigning for anything.”
Today, Doar says he still subscribes “to the concept that what we want to achieve in this country is not white schools and black schools but just plain schools; not white Americans or black Americans but just Americans. That’s what (King) stood for.”
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STEVEN
FOSTER
Foster is senior rabbi of Congregation Emanuel in Denver.
As a college student, Foster joined the Selma- to-Montgomery march in 1965. “I wore my yarmulke and went with Jewish identity and Jewish values. All the abuse we took from people on the way was incredible. But we knew we were doing the right thing.”
Foster heard King speak on many occasions.
“He had a profound effect upon my life. He took religious values, cut them across religious lines and helped people to see the essence of what religious values were about. ”
Social justice is so important in Judaism that Foster wrote his thesis on the topic, which King himself embodied. “Most things I’ve tried to do in my life have been in the same spirit in which he encouraged people like me to operate.
“He cared about civil rights and liberation. This isn’t just about black people. I’ve always tried to say Martin Luther King may have been black, but he was a hero to us all.”
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VINCENT
HARDING
Professor emeritus of religion and social transformation at the Iliff School of Theology, author of several publications about King, consultant for the PBS television series “Eyes on the Prize.”
Harding, who lives in Denver, met King in 1958, and the two became friends. After King’s death in 1968, Harding worked with Coretta Scott King to establish the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center in Atlanta.
Harding is troubled by this nation’s tendency to preserve King in the March on Washington stance. “We act as if he never developed or grew after ‘I Have a Dream.’ A lot of what he went on to wrestle with was the future of the people and the country. Central to that was the set of themes that he picked up in the last three or four years of his life.
“He insisted that we deal on a very profound level on the issue of racism, which was a constant, but he was pressing us as well to deal with materialism and the dangers of us being overcome by that.”
Harding wonders when we’ll catch up with King. “He’s been gone a long time. We don’t have a future as a nation unless we take those issues on.”
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JOHN AND EDNA MOSLEY
John was the first African-American football player at what is now Colorado State University and a Tuskegee Airman. Edna was the first black city councilwoman in Aurora. They are shown with Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper below.
In Greensboro, N.C., where John Mosley was a professor of air science at A&T State University, the couple were members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “King came to speak to the NAACP group,” John recalled. “He was very soothing and inspired a determination and the fight that was so predominant at the time against discrimination.”
The Mosleys and others worked to integrate a golf course, the library, a public swimming pool and other public accommodations in the city.
What the couple remember most about King was his overwhelming presence, said Edna. “He was so inspiring. He was a trailblazer. And we’re delighted that not only African-Americans celebrate him but others can as well.”
a chairman for the
March on Washington.
King would be disappointed that we haven’t made more progress with human rights, Peters said.
“He would say that we should focus more on freedom, justice and equality – for women, for undocumented workers,” for all the various people who are underrepresented.
“He would be disappointed too that his name is being used so much. He didn’t like the publicity and the focus on him. … The movement was everything to him. He put the movement before his family, everything.”
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JOHN
SEIGENTHALER
Longtime editor of The (Nashville) Tennessean, founding editorial director of USA Today, founder of the First Amendment Center
Seigenthaler was an aide to then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy when he first met Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1961.
“It was a meeting between Kennedy, the classic pragmatist, and King, the classic idealist,” he recalled. “King was committed to exposing the evils of racism wherever they existed. Kennedy … already was thinking about (his brother’s) re-election and anxious to resolve civil rights disputes in the courts.
“So Bob Kennedy … proposed that King make a major effort at voter registration. He made the case that there was no law enforcement to protect (the protesters) in the streets.”
“King’s response was a perfect one. He said, ‘We have a project on voter registration, but I must confront evil wherever I find it, and we know it will be dangerous, but there is no other way that I can see that I can bring about change as quickly as it needs to be.”
The next month, Freedom Riders were attacked in Alabama. (Seigenthaler tried to help several riders and was beaten and left unconscious.) Kennedy sent in federal forces to re-establish the peace.
For Seigenthaler, one of King’s most compelling lines came during a speech at Vanderbilt University. “And to those of you who are white and sympathetic to the movement but cannot help the cause because of political reasons or family reasons or financial reasons,” King said, “we will liberate you too.”
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WILMA J. WEBB
The former first lady of Denver and state representative was instrumental in pushing through legislation that enacted Colorado’s King holiday in 1984.
“I believe that in 2006 there is still a great outcome in celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day because this day, like no other holiday, still serves as a day of conscience-raising for our nation. Today, Dr. King would be righteously involved in bringing a lasting peace to the world by being at the forefront of peaceful resolution to nations at war; ensuring justice by continuing to bring about unconditional brotherly love in all places to all races, religions, nations and cultures throughout the world; eliminating poverty from so many people … and progressively working for the physical, mental and spiritual wellness of people everywhere.”
