Had he lived, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 82 years old on Jan. 15. It is a good time to question whether America has lived up to his dream of social and legal justice for all.
As a key civil rights crusader killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1968, he marched and preached for an end to racist practices in America.
The champion for non-violence and civil rights was born Michael King in Atlanta on Jan. 15, 1929 to the Rev. Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.
After the family visited Germany in 1934, his father changed both their names from Michael to Martin Luther Sr. and Jr. in honor of the German protestant leader Martin Luther.
The young King Jr. attended Booker T. Washington High School, skipping the ninth and 12th grades. At age 15, without graduating from high school, he entered Morehouse College, graduating in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology.
He met and married Coretta Scott in 1953 on the lawn of her parent’s house in Heiberger, Alabama. King then began his doctoral studies in systemic theology at Boston University under the guidance of Dean Walter Muelder and Professor Allen Knight Chalmers.
During his college years, King was also influenced by educator, theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman.
Thurman was a classmate of King’s father and had traveled as a missionary and met India’s leading nonviolent social change leader, Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1959 King traveled to Gandhi’s birthplace, inspiring this comment on a radio broadcast: “Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.”
King’s legacy of nonviolence got its earliest start in 1955 during the Jim Crow laws era throughout the South. In Montgomery, Alabama, on Dec. 1, 1955 Rosa Parks, a black bus passenger, refused to give up her seat to a white man and was arrested. That led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by King. For 385 days, no African-American rode the buses; they car-pooled, rode bikes or walked.
“He was about healing,” said Gino Sevacos a San Quentin resident. “Martin Luther King was the Gandhi of America. He was a loving man who was about healing the sickness of America.”
Richard Poma, a resident of CDCR for 30-plus years, commented, “Whether white, black, brown or otherwise, Dr. King, stood for what this country was built on — not ‘I the people’ or ‘me the people’ but ‘we the people.’”
For King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the non-violent tactics of Gandhi proved useful and effective in his civil rights sit-ins, county jail time, marches and speeches.
He utilized its design in Albany, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama, where the infamous “Bull Connor” led police. At Connor’s orders, water hoses and police dogs were used to control the protestors, including children.
The movement spread throughout the South, expanding to the right to vote.
Years later King led a march for jobs and freedom in Washington D.C. on Aug. 28, 1963. Demands resounded for an end to racial segregation in public schools, meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law eradicating racial discrimination in employment.
Dwayne Reynolds, in prison for 21 years and San Quentin for nine, said, “This is a prison industry and incarceration without rehabilitative preparation for transitioning successfully back into society; it flows against King’s vision.”
It was on April 4, 1968 on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where an assassin’s shot echoed, silencing the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King.
“I was in Los Angeles; it was the day of his death,” said Michael Cooke, a one-year resident of San Quentin. Cooke remembers his father’s and uncle’s anger. Cooke, 54, remembered his uncle sitting with his head in his hands saying. “They got him. They finally got him.”
Cooke, incarcerated for 11 years, said King’s ideals began to manifest when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voters Rights Act of 1965.
“That suppressed what Malcolm X was saying, ‘Either the ballot or the bullet,’” Cooke said. “Voting gave people voices in their own communities — how economics were distributed for schools, housing, jobs, commerce in general.”
Joanne Connelly, a San Quentin volunteer said, “I’m reading Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow and it’s fascinating. From that my thoughts go to what Dr. King was working on, which was civil rights and dignity for all people.”
Dr. King left a legacy for the world to follow during a time when America was flexing its muscles to become a true melting pot of racial egalitarianism.
Rose Elizondo, a five-year volunteer in San Quentin, said she became aware of Dr. King when she was quite young. “My father worked in the civil rights movement for Chicanos in South Texas. Martin Luther King was one of his heroes.”
Elizondo volunteers for several programs and said that it is important to model King’s legacy of peaceful liberation from segregation.
“I find and feel his spirit on Thursdays at Restorative Justice Interfaith as men of all races and faiths sit in a circle and talk. I see it Friday mornings in Green Life where we are becoming solutionaries for Environmental Justice as one of our facilitators said, “Let’s live with the earth, not just on it.”
“I hear Dr. King’s spiritual liberation in the silence of Centering Prayer on Mondays and Buddhist meditation on Sundays,” said Elizondo. “It’s important to learn to be like Dr. King and dream of living in peace and harmony where our differences become our strengths against oppression.”
