I remember the North and Southampton Reformed Church as a cold and staid place. Adults spoke in sometimes hushed, sometimes strident tones while my brother and I fidgeted. Much of what was said was gibberish, anyway, grownup talk.
There was one day, though, that stuck in my mind then, and sticks there now. In 1963 the minister read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's Letter From a Birmingham Jail to the congregation, in its entirety.
It was obvious even to an eight-year-old that this man, the one who was held in jail, felt an anger that our minister shared. The people around me were members of a straight-laced old Dutch Reformed protestant sect (this church was originally organized in 1710) and the words of this man moved them to rapt silence. I was under the impression that this letter was in fact what the minister held in his hand. I wondered why the author of those words had been put in a jail cell.
Why would a person have to sleep in their car when motel rooms are available? Why did mobs lynch people? Why would a father have to answer a question from his daughter that spoke of race hatred? To an eight-year-old boy of Irish, English and Dutch descent growing up in a Philadelphia suburb, there were only questions. Nearly sixty years later, some of the answers remain elusive.
Today we celebrate the life of a great man who encouraged us to ask those compelling questions of ourselves, and reminded us that freedom in America belongs to everyone.
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