"REMEMBERING THE DREAM"

January 17, 2003

Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn
Temple Sinai
New Orleans, Louisiana

One thing that we need to know about Martin Luther King, Jr. is that for our sake and for our own souls, his memory must be kept alive. On the eve of yet another national observance of King's birthday, perhaps it is useful to reintroduce Martin Luther King to older folks and to the younger generation as well.

I believe that the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s represents a tapestry of our nation, formed and transformed by a struggle unequaled since the Civil War. Every American who has any patriotism at all, and any appreciation for our democratic republic, should join in this national observance of the one person that history may someday place beside Abraham Lincoln as the embodiment of the American soul. In saying such, I do not infer that Dr. King was a saint-he was painfully aware of his weaknesses, infidelities and frailties. Nevertheless, I believe he was a prophet of God-and nothing less.

Like that beautiful word "love," we so easily talk of civil rights without realizing what it really means. Civil rights are the rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship-especially these fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed us by the 12^th and 14^th Amendments of the Constitution.

In a few moments, I'm going to ask you to use all the imagination you can summon as I present myself as Martin Luther King, Jr. attempting to tell the story of "my" life. First, we need to remember the setting of the great struggle which Dr. King initiated. Do you know that when he began the modern phase of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery that his audience included the children of people who had themselves been slaves? Yes, we came a way under Dr. King, and progress has been made. But all of my remarks this Shabbas are designed to communicate but one fact: there is more progress to be made. Let's proceed first with the story.

I was born January 15, 1929 to a beautiful mother and a stubborn, hardheaded Baptist preacher father. In my youth, I thought of going into medicine or practicing law. Perhaps I was destined to be a preacher. I was admitted to Morehouse College at the age of 15, under a special program designed for gifted children. I liked a beer, a pipe, the pool table and jitterbugging, but in my senior year, I decided to go into the ministry, to the amazement of my friends!

When my father announced to our congregation that I had been called by God to the pulpit, I was expected to preach a trial sermon. That sermon went over so well, and only a very few of my college friends knew that that sermon was actually one which had been published by the famous Harry Emerson Fosdick of the Riverside Church in New York. I don't think he would have minded my "borrowing" it!

During my senior year, President Harry S. Truman published a report entitled, "To Secure These Rights." That report brought the phrase "civil rights" into common political use, replacing the old so-called "Negro question." Civil rights are no more for blacks than for whites, and no more for the poor than the rich.

It was while I was a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania that I was greatly influenced by Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance to oppression. I was also tremendously influenced by theologians of that day, particularly one Reinhold Niebuhr.

After seminary, I earned my PhD at the Boston University, and I still can't figure out how I was made valedictorian of my graduating class.

It was about this time that the words of Henry David Thoreau came to possess me:

We can no longer lend our cooperation to an evil system.

And this caused me to believe that the person who accepts evil without protesting against it is actually cooperating with evil.

I courted a number of young women in my day. There was a certain woman who was enrolled at the New England Conservatory of Music who caught my eye. She finally agreed to marry me, and it was the luckiest day of my life! After the wedding, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep and Coretta did the driving. Because resorts and hotels in Alabama were prohibited by law from serving Negroes, we were obliged to spend our wedding night at the closest thing to a public accommodation within reach of Negroes-a funeral home, owned by some friends of my in-laws.

I was called to Montgomery's prestigious Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, at a salary of $4,200 a year. I was the highest paid black preacher in Montgomery! And it was only two weeks after I began my work there that Chief Justice Earl Warren handed down the decision in the Brown v. Topeka case, striking down racial segregation as unconstitutional by a court vote of 8-0.

I soon became involved with the NAACP. I received a letter from the secretary of that organization, appointing me to the Executive Committee. That secretary's name was Rosa Parks. She was a seamstress at a downtown department store, and a woman with a very bold and noble character.

I learned that fact when, on December 1, 1955, she initiated a whole new revolution in American history. She was on a bus on her way home from work, and the bus was full-14 whites in front and 22 Negroes in the back-when it stopped and a white man boarded. The bus driver ordered the four passengers immediately behind the whites to stand up and move to the back. Three of them moved, but Rosa Parks, tired from a day's work and with sore feet, remained in her seat. She would not heed the bus driver's demands to move. He stopped the bus, summoned the police, and they arrested Rosa Parks.

As they say, that was the straw that broke the back of the oppressed. The black citizenry was aroused and before I knew what had happened, I was conscripted to lead the bus boycott that would last for a year.

I made public addresses without having much time to prepare for them. Many times I felt as if the spirit of God was putting words in my mouth. In one of my "instant speeches," when the people were so aroused, I told them that there comes a time when people get tired, and that we're here to tell those people who have mistreated us for so long that we're tired! Tired of being segregated and humiliated, tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression.

That year of the bus boycott was traumatic for everyone, but by the following year the United States Supreme Court had ruled segregation in public transportation to be illegal. We had achieved our goal, but our victory was punctuated with all kinds of cruel bombings of our homes and churches. There were assassination attempts on my life, our home was bombed with dynamite, and I was always in and out of jails.

In 1960, I moved back to Atlanta to co-pastor the Ebenezer Baptist Church with my father. We created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to which I gave most of my time.

In October of 1960 I was arrested with 33 young people while protesting segregation at the lunch counter of the Rich's department store in Atlanta. Charges were dropped, but I was sentenced to prison on the pretext that I had violated my probation on a minor traffic offense.

The case received national attention. While President Eisenhower would do nothing about it, the Democratic presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy, interceded for me and I was released. Many think that this contributed to Kennedy's narrow margin of political victory.

While confined to jail in Birmingham, I wrote letters to my brothers and sister who were opposed to my cause. You see, there was much opposition among my own black community. For so long they had feared making any public protest. They were worried of the consequences. I tried to persuade them by saying that in the same way one should obey just laws, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.

Some of my colleagues labeled me an extremist. I never considered myself an extremist! Though, the more I think of it, Jesus was an extremist, Amos was an extremist for justice, John Bunyon was an extremist when he said:

I will stay in jail til the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.

Abraham Lincoln was an extremist when he said:

This nation cannot survive half slave, half free.

Thomas Jefferson had been an extremist when he averred:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I suppose the important thing is not whether or not we are extremists, but what kind of extremists we choose to be. Are we extremists for hate or for love? Could we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the extension of justice?

In 1963, our campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and to reform hiring practices in this country drew national attention. Some of you may remember that these were the times when the police dogs were turned on us, and fire hoses, as we demonstrated.

To give national visibility to our cause, I joined with other Civil Rights leaders throughout the country of all races and faiths in organizing what became known as the "March on Washington"-the march for jobs and freedom. It was there, before the statue of the Great Emancipator, that over a quarter of a million people heard me share my dream for this nation of ours.

We needed a federal voting rights law, and our first march toward this end was from Selma to the state capitol. But we were turned back by troopers with night sticks and tear gas. Our second march, for the accomplishment of voting rights for all citizens of this country, was different, however. When we were confronted with a barricade of troopers, instead of forcing a confrontation, we knelt and prayed, and then turned back.

Oh my goodness, how the more militant in our movement accused me then of cooperating with federal and local authorities. Some even called me a traitor to the cause. But the country was aroused and indignant, and our demonstrations resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It was difficult, but I knew that I could not only look at my own interests and at our nation's racial concerns. We needed to form a coalition of poor people of all races to address not only racism, but the problem of poverty and unemployment and economic justice and then, the issue of Vietnam.

Ultimately, you know how I needed to support a strike of sanitation workers which was being waged in Memphis, Tennessee. There, on the night before my death, I delivered what has come to be known as the "Mountaintop Speech." I was bone weary when I offered my firm testimony that "only when it's dark enough can you see the stars."

It really doesn't matter what happens now (I told those gathered) because:

I've been to the mountaintop. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. And I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. . . . I'm not worrying about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. I have a dream. . . that the brotherhood of man will become a reality. With this faith, I will go out and carve a tunnel of hope from a mountain of despair. . . .

Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968 at the age of 39. He never gave up his struggle for justice; neither should we. He never allowed himself to define his concerns so narrowly that the causes of others did not concern him; neither should we.

When so many liberal Christians condemned Israel, even after she stood on the brink of destruction during the Six Day War, Dr. King stood up for Israel. Dr. King stood up as well for freedom of Soviet Jews. Just as he was there for us, we must still be there for him. His voice is silent now, but his spirit remains alive. Let us pledge, in this brand new century into which Dr. King was denied entrance, to preserve his dream and to further his vision of freedom for all. We shall overcome! With God's help, and with firm resolve, we shall overcome the fears that threaten still to engulf our nation and our world: the fear of violence, the fear of race, the fear of ignorance.

Yes my dear friends, as Dr. King's 74^th birthday arrives, ours is to have the wisdom to join arms and spirits with our fellow Americans and to reaffirm that deep in our hearts we still believe we shall overcome someday!

Amen.