December 31, 2003
From Ed Chasteen
A Kansas City artist named Powell drew the picture of Dr. King that hangs on the wall behind my word processor. I see it each time I sit to write. Seeing him there, I can almost hear his rolling cadence as his “I Have a Dream” echoes in 1963 off the Lincoln monument in our nation’s capital. And in my dreams what I write takes wing as I remember the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Brown’s AME Chapel and Bloody Sunday in Selma, Letters from a Birmingham Jail, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Loraine Motel. Through it all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a moral and spiritual giant among us.
His books and his speeches on tape sit on the shelves behind me as I write. I sit for hours to read and to listen as each new year dawns and his birthday nears. Years ago a medical doctor told me I have Multiple Sclerosis and could not be active. But Dr. King tells me to keep on marching toward that mountaintop where all God’s children sit down together at the table of brotherhood. With our eyes on the prize, ain’t nobody gonna turn us around. We shall overcome someday.
When a Klansman won election in 1988 to the Louisiana Legislature, my students at William Jewell College and I started HateBusters. The governor invited us to come help the state redeem itself. We never say no when invited to come help where hate has hurt. We charge no fees. “Red and yellow, black, brown and white; Christian, Buddhist and Jew; Hindu, Baha’i and Muslim too; All are precious in our sight.” Inspired by the life and teachings of Dr. King, this is our HateBusters motto.
MS makes me limp when I walk and tires me out. But filling my mind with his words and my heart with his passion for brotherhood and justice denies my physical infirmity any power over me. When I go to the doctor for what ails me, I go to Dr. King. He lifts me up. I run and do not grow weary in pursuit of peace and justice and the acceptance of all people by all people.
When someone burned a cross here in Liberty in 1991, hundreds of us from all over the metro gathered at the chapel on campus for prayer and singing. Then we marched to our courthouse steps for speeches. “We love the victim and the perpetrator,” I said. “But we will not tolerate such behavior in our town.” Dubuque, Iowa had recently had eight crosses burned. The morning after our march, the Star said if Dubuque had responded as we did, they would not have had a second. We didn’t. Dr. King taught us well. Immediate and visible and massive response is the only effective remedy to an attack on our collective well-being. A threat to the vulnerable among us must galvanize the guardians among us to action that grabs the high moral ground and raises the flag that rallies moral and spiritual indignation and carries us all to the promised land.
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