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ONE ROCK, MANY RIPPLES!
Remembering Martin Luther King’s Example
by John T. Crestwell, Jr.
January 16, 2005

There’s a most informative documentary I’ve been watching, made by PBS in 1998, called Africans in America.   There was one story that has really stood out for me about an African named Anthony Johnson who had come over to the New World, along with several hundred poor Europeans from England, attempting to work his way toward citizenship.  In those days before the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade became the norm, if you came across the water, regardless of the color of your skin, and you worked for three to five years in the New World as an indentured servant, clearing forests and cultivating fields, you could buy your freedom and then perhaps in time buy land and get other indentured servants to help you cultivate your fields and crops.  Johnson fulfilled his commitment and bought some land and did very well.  He was able to pass his land on to his children after his death.  This system seemed to be working well although labor was quite intensive in early America. The work had to be done though and this system allowed it to get done.  But, like so many times in world history, narcissism and greed and hatred move us from the reciprocal relationship toward the one-sided dictatorship; from the inclusive to the exclusive. England would soon change her laws regarding indentured servitude because the word got out in Europe that the labor was hard and the numbers of folk volunteering to go to the New World waned dwindled.  Needing a labor force, England would change her laws.  Whites could still come over and till the soil for a short period but Blacks would be given a life sentence.  Enter the profitability, the economics of the slave trade and now you have developed a new system of free labor in the New World that would produce millions in revenue but would also victimize millions in servitude.

What about the Johnson family?  Well, the land passed on for a while but eventually it would go back to England and a new owner.  This short-lived freedom for the Johnson clan was over…

I’ve been thinking—what if???  What if England found a better way to cultivate the land? What if the rich, those in power had the will to share the bounty not just with their own countrymen but with those who were there already—the Natives to the land?  What if we uplifted the worth and dignity of all people no matter their color from the beginning?  What if our ambition was in line with our compassion?  What if Johnson’s legacy could have been honored?  Think about it…  One shift in policy and law had a tremendous ripple effect which ends up creating a trade in human souls lasting over 300 years; and countless lives were destroyed.  What if there were more foresight and vision, the system of slavery, which we are all heir to, could have been avoided, and the issue of race which still lives as a cancer in the mind of our society could have been a benign thought.

This is the power we have.  We have a moral responsibility to think and to make sure the means by which we live justify the ends for which we live, as King would say…   One immoral deed can have long-term negative effects and create irreparable damage.  But one righteous deed, one sacrifice for the cause of justice, one voice for truth can also have a ripple effect and change the face of this world.  One stone, one pebble, one rock creates many ripples…

There was a ROCK that gave us about twelve years of dedicated service in America.  This ROCK became the moral voice of our nation, in a country that had become quite comfortable, quite adjusted to segregation and discrimination.  This ROCK revealed that his nation needed to look in the mirror and see that she was being hypocritical to her ideals. 

I’m sure you have figured it out that Martin Luther King, Jr. was the ROCK which created many ripples in our society—ripples that continue to this day.  

I got a call from a friend, Duane McClure, and he was telling me to hurry and tune into AM 570 because some journalist, I can’t remember his name, was bashing the King Holiday.  He was saying that the “liberals” took away Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday combining them into President’s day but that we still have a King Holiday.  He said we should change the name to Civil Rights Day and lump all the civil rights people into that day.  He said that we need to remember how great Washington was in securing America’s identity and how instrumental Lincoln was in uniting the north and south.  He said they contributed much more than King…   Then he began to talk about the shortcomings King had and that he was basically not righteous enough to warrant a holiday; and this radio-show host, as if he is a saint, said that he would not think twice about King on the day off.  Of course I was livid.  I tried calling into the station.  I must have hit re-dial sixty times.  When someone finally picked up the phone, they said the show was on tape then abruptly hung up.  You know, I don’t care if this so called journalist does not think about Dr. King on his day off.  I don’t even care if he does not like King.  But if he read just a little bit, if he did a wee-bit of research, he would at least have shown more respect for a man who did more for the United States, in the area of civil rights, than probably any other human in American history.  King made us look at and face up to the principles we created—the ideals our power structure made reality.  And this is something Washington, who had slaves that were not well taken care of (many died of starvation) and Lincoln, who supported a plan to move Blacks out of America and to Liberia (he didn’t want to deal with the problem) well, this is something they never did!  King did something these American legends did not even consider.  He asked that we see the humanity and worth in all human beings no matter their place of birth, their station in life, or the color of their skin.  I like the words of Robert Penn Warren who wrote an article called, “A Dearth of Heroes”.  He said, “Have we, in America, had a hero in our time—that is, since World War II?  I can think of only one man with a serious claim, Martin Luther King, Jr.  The theme was high, the occasion noble, the stage open to the world’s eye, the courage clear, and against odds.  And martyrdom came to purge all dross away.  King seems made for the folk consciousness—a true hero.”

I want to say more now about how important it is for all of us to respect the King Holiday…

From about 1640 onward in the New World, this nation’s elite believed it was natural, lawful and basically okay to have two societies, one civilized and the other “the untouchables”, the slaves, uncivilized, who had the job of handling the extensive labor so that prosperity could be realized.  As it is said, “They made cotton king.”  This idea, this mythos of superiority/inferiority was inherited by our Founding Fathers and the privileged of that day.  Even though America broke ties with England, early Americans saw freedom as something that was for those of European descendent only.  The idea of Native Americans or Asians or Africans being equal was not a consideration.  They were not cognizant of the freedom that supercedes the tribal.  This lasted hundreds of years until the Emancipation Proclamation but even after that, the economic state of most Africans in America was still not much improved because true freedom means equal protection under the law to earn a fair wage and to be given a fair chance in the labor-force; a fair chance to live the American Dream.  Blacks were not enslaved physically, but they were still mentally and psychologically slaves.  They were systemic slaves.  And so, society up to 1956 when King was at his first Church in Montgomery, Alabama, still lived a separate and unequal reality.  Few Blacks could vote.  If they tried to vote, fear tactics were used to suppress them from voting; there were poll taxes, tests had to be taken to see if one was, quote, unquote “smart” enough to vote.  In substance, most of America in the 50’s was still living in a slavery mentality reality—if that makes sense…  Now King, in this era, is first a local hero and minister who helps organize a boycott of the segregated buses in Montgomery.  This achievement leads to other accomplishments like desegregating many restaurants and lunch counters and later getting voting rights ensuring that many southern Blacks would not be intimidated away from the polls.  He was made the leader of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), a national movement, and SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and became the leader for civil rights particularly in the south.  He was jailed over twenty times, stabbed once, assaulted by angry mobs during marches on at least four occasions; it’s obvious he had great courage. 

After his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 during the March on Washington, he became a national figure and would later, at 35 years of age, become the youngest person in America to win the Noble Peace Prize.  Over the course of his life many laws in America changed to reflect that African Americans were also heir to the fortunes of America.  It should be noted that almost all civil rights legislature passed during his time.  Certainly, he asked for his untimely death when he spoke out against the war in Vietnam stating that it was unjust and misguided.  Like a true prophet, he lost presidential support and was in J. Edgar Hoover’s hands now for a certain death.  Even many in his organization felt he was wrong and out of place talking about the war.  But he would boldly say, “I’m not a consensus leader.  I follow my conscience.”  And his inner voice called him to be an outer voice crying out in the wilderness for America to “live out the true meaning of its creed.”  For King, how could America be working in a distant land trying to take the splinter out of Vietnam’s eye when it had a log on fire in its own eye.  

Now, what was Dr. King doing to our society when he said we are all equal and all God’s children?  For me, he was changing the mythological construction of our society and that is insane, revolutionary, idealistic and righteous!  He was forcing our civilization to look at what it professed with its lips but did otherwise.  The backlash and hate manifested because he was fighting a long and established cultural ideology. The foundation was firm.  You ever tried uprooting a tree?  It’s quite difficult.  But every now and then, a strong wind will come along and every so often one of those great oaks come tumbling down.  When you challenge the establishment, challenge the status quo, you are asking for a backlash that could cost you your life.  But if you are persistent and your message is true, eventually, perhaps not in your day, but eventually, the tree will come down.

I’m trying to get a basic point over and that is—the fight not over.  “The moral arc is long but it bends toward justice”.  We still have work to do!  I want you to see that the history our country is related to, is a history of racial hatred and inequality.  Perhaps you are tired of hearing this?  I know you want it to go away.  I do too!  But the only way it will leave us is if we escort it out the door expeditiously.  We must make it go away!  And this is what King meant when he said we can “…speed up that day” and that “change does not come on the whims of inevitability.”   His evangelical liberalism taught him that the power is in the human voice, human hands, and our feet to make straight the path so that “justice can roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

And some of you may think racial problems are theoretical in our modern times.  Well, I invite you to turn on the news today.  Outside of these diverse doors, there is a world of segregation and hate in many places.  The hate mail flying through Charles County is one example of this—you heard about that I’m sure?  Some group is sending flyers out about Hispanics and Blacks and it’s very offensive.  Whether it is in small or large pocket it does not matter.  It is there and must be addressed.  But really, we have to do something bigger than that.  We have to be honest with ourselves and look in the mirror, and look at the person directly in front of it and ask that person to change their ways.  Change must occur at a micro and macro level—privately and publicly.  And when we can look at another no matter their race or creed and see them suffering and say to ourselves, “Can I see another’s woe and not be in sorrow too?  Can I see another’s grief and not seek for kind relief?  Can I see a falling tear and not feel my sorrows share?  NO, NO never can it be never; never, never can it be.”    If we can say this and then put our words into action, we are moving toward King’s Beloved Community and dealing with the person in the mirror.  That is our challenge this morning.  And this challenge from this great man who for me, saved the soul of our nation, deserves a day to be reflected upon by every American and really every person in our world.

And you know, our faith, our religion can help in this situation…  We can’t make somebody love another person who is different.  They have to want to.  You cannot legislate love; you cannot create a creed and force folk to embrace each other.  But you can push people to think differently at times.  And so, movements like ours that believe in the worth and dignity of ALL people; that raise the collective consciousness of our culture.  This is what will turn our country and our world around! 

I want to bring this message home if I can…   When I look at this church, where we are, how we are growing, I see us at a place in time, continuing, in fact, King’s legacy, where our work here to be a multiracial congregation can have a lasting impact on the legacy of America and the religion we call Unitarian Universalism.   The church is a flower that has not fully bloomed.  It’s interesting, in the secular arena, for example in sports, we have had diversity for quite some time.  In varying sporting events there are many races working together in a spirit of cooperation and mutuality.  If you’ve been in the military you know it’s quite diverse.  If you’ve worked for the Federal Government, you know it is also diverse.  But then you go to your hometown church and you realize that it is still segregated like early America.  And you wonder if anyone really cares to change this fact.  You wonder because the preacher does not talk about it.  You wonder because the congregants do not discuss it.  You wonder because they go there Sunday after Sunday and talk about love and justice, compassion and giving and they never mention that the secular world is more diverse than the spiritual world.  There’s something wrong with that! You wonder if the words preachers so eloquently profess are merely things said to make parishioners feel good and instead of doing good...  You wonder if the church will ever move beyond the tribal and trivial, toward its true mission to help folk open their minds and hearts, freeing them from the programmed foolishness that tells them or tells you to fear the other and only love those who look like you.   I am afraid the church has been judged as null and void in many places because it has not lived up to what it professes. 

But, somewhere I read that faith without works is dead.  Somewhere I read that actions speak louder than words.  Somewhere I read that we must speak truth to power.  Somewhere I read that a tree is known by the fruit it bears. Somewhere I read that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.  Yes, somewhere I read that all people are created equal…  If the churches of the world are a part of this universalism, these eternal truths, that not only nurture our spirits but enlighten us to work toward the higher aims of life, then we must continue working toward the goal of creating a community of peace, liberty and justice for all.

I want you to know, I am proud this morning.  I am proud because we are sincerely working toward practicing what we preach.  So let us, as a church and religion, continue on the path we’ve started to create the Beloved Community, right here in this house, and honor the lasting truth that Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life for. It is the truth that teaches that we must “learn to live together and sisters and brothers or perish as fools.”  And so, let us then continue to be an example to this faith, to this community and to our world—that one rock really does create many ripples; that one good deed can change the world; and that King’s legacy is not dead. As William Cullen Bryant said well, as I close—“Truth crushed to earth rises again.”  Oh, Dr. King, my friend, I hope I did you justice this morning.  Might your dream live on in me and in us all…  Amen.

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