Fifty Years After 'I Have a Dream,' Remembering the real Martin

Memories of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are particularly vivid this month as we anticipate the fiftieth anniversary of the historic civil rights march on Washington on August 28, 1963.

Martin’s familiar image appears in churches, government offices, department stores and on flyers hawking January sales. Teachers point to his picture in classrooms and require their classes to read his biography. He is quoted in sermons and in political ceremonies, almost always including “I have a dream" from the March on Washington.

Artists of all ages try to capture his likeness in pencil, ink and oil, but only few of them get it just right. And each April television broadcasts brief clips of his April 3, 1968 speech the night before he was killed: "I may not get there with you, but we as a people will get to the promised land."

With each passing year Martin the human being is mediated with fewer dimensions. He's becoming a "marble person" like the striking sculpture by Lei Yixin in the King Memorial in Washington -- beautiful to behold but cold to the touch.

But still vigorous ecumenical and interfaith leaders who knew him have not forgotten the real man.

"Sooner or later it happens to everyone who passes on," says a Baptist pastor and ecumenical leader who marched with the martyred civil rights leader. "But it's sad people will never know the real Martin."

Most people have no idea Martin could make you laugh until your stomach hurt with his imitations of other preachers, or that he considered himself a pool shark on a par with Minnesota Fats.

Close friends remember but rarely mention that Martin chain-smoked cigarettes, slapped Aramis aftershave on his cheeks, and – after checking to see if there were Baptists in the room – happily accepted offers of Dewers on the rocks.

Although it seems sacrilegious now, his close friends called him "Little Mike" to distinguish him from his redoubtable father, "Big Mike." The elder King was born "Michael," and he named his son, "Michael, Jr." Later they changed their names to Martin Luther King senior and junior, in part to invoke the German reformation leader. But to many friends they were still "Mike."

"Big Mike" King was the widely respected Baptist pastor of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church.

"They were a middle class family," recalled the late Samuel DeWitt Proctor, pastor of New York's Abyssinian Baptist Church, co-director of the Peace Corps, and a classmate of Martin Jr. at Crozer Theological Seminary.

Proctor would recall with a combination of fondness and chagrin that the young Martin had financial advantages other students didn't. "He'd come to class in a tie and wing-tipped shoes," Proctor once told a gathering at The Interchurch Center in New York. "He didn't have to bus tables or sweep floors like the rest of us to pay tuition. He always had his assignments done on time, or early."

In December 1955, when Rosa Parks' act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, Martin was a young Baptist pastor with a hat and tie and wing-tipped shoes. He was chosen to lead the boycott in the name of integration because he was a little known and noncontroversial figure. But that would quickly change.

By the spring of 1956, 27-year-old boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was internationally famous. A Baptist executive made an entry in his diary: "Young King is brilliant but inexperienced and not prepared for the huge stage on which he finds himself."

Later, the executive said, "he learned fast."

The boycott continued for months until November 13, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Alabama District Court ruling that racial segregation on buses was illegal. The success of the boycott was due in large measure to the fact that it was motivated by ecumenical and interfaith commitments to justice. Virtually all African American congregations and several white churches and synagogues supported the movement.

And around the country, leaders of national denominations, communions, ecumenical and interfaith organizations offered their support. The Rev. Edwin Tuller, General Secretary of the then American Baptist Convention, declared his support and invited King to address the ABC annual meeting in 1957.

Another American Baptist, the Rev. R.H. Edwin Espy, then associate general secretary of the National Council of Churches, provided financial support for the boycott. Although the Civil Rights movement was controversial in many American congregations, communion leaders such as the Rev. Eugene Carson Blake of the United Presbyterian Church and Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America stood literally in support of the movement and marched hand-in-hand with Martin in often hazardous venues.

Throughout Martin Luther King's lifetime, church and ecumenical leaders walked by his side and got to know him in many different circumstances and emotions -- when he was angry, scared, worried about his family, but also when he was relaxed and funny. The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, who was later general secretary of the National Council of Churches, met King when she invited him to her church in Cleveland. "His presence changed that church forever," she said.

The Rev. Andrew Young, later a Member of Congress, United Nations Ambassador and Mayor of Atlanta was on the youth staff of the National Council of Churches when King invited him to serve as his lieutenant in a myriad of marches and causes. Young, ordained in the United Church of Christ, was NCC president in 2000-2001.

Ecumenical leaders who supported King are legion. Christian activist Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, was a civil rights leader when Martin was still in school and founded the YWCA's Center for Racial Justice in 1965. Dr. Paul Abrecht, an American Baptist ethicist and member of the staff of the World Council of Churches, worked closely with Martin on international issues. Methodist Arthur Flemming, an educator and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Eisenhower, was president of the National Council of Churches -- and perhaps the NCC's most eloquent spokesperson on civil rights -- when Martin was killed in 1968.

The Martin these ecumenical leaders knew was anything but a marble figure. He was a laughing, weeping, compassionate human being.

The late Rev. William T. McKee, the first African American to lead an American Baptist national board, was on the staff of the denomination's pension board in 1968. "Martin had no pension and no life insurance the whole time he was in the movement," McKee would tell friends. "We were after him to sign up (through the ABC Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board) but he was always on the road or too busy." A veteran MMBB executive, Martin England, "pursued King all over the South" to make sure he signed the papers to protect his family from financial ruin.

Happily, Martin had signed the papers before he was assassinated in April 1968. Clearly King was supported by church and ecumenical friends -- spiritually, emotionally, physically and, in the end, financially -- all his life.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a member of the ecumenical family, and we were proud to be a member of his. For persons of faith and good will who still remember him, he will never be a marble statue.

As we look back a half century to the March on Washington best remembered for his “I Have a Dream” speech, his warmth and passion for justice seem as alive as ever.