This week, I—like many of you—participated in celebrations of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On January 18, I attended two major celebrations in Los Angeles, where I was able to hear the words of others who uplifted this giant of a man.
As I thought about how significant Dr. King’s life and work is to where we are as a people, in our respect and understanding of the importance of justice for all, I wondered just how impactful his educational roots may have been as he grew into his ultimate mission to be that “Drum Major for Justice,”—not only for African Americans but for the people of the world!
Dr. King’s life and legacy is nothing short of amazing. At a recent breakfast honoring his birthday, I heard that he entered Morehouse College reading at an eighth-grade level, but graduated as an incredible student. Was Morehouse (an environment of predominately male African Americans) the environment that Dr. King needed in order to test his thinking, his visions? Could it have been the environment, being with so many other outstanding male African-American students that convinced Martin Luther King, Jr. that his thoughts about Christianity and his vision for justice for all were indeed correct for the times?
Dr. John Wilson, Executive Director for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the speaker at the MLK breakfast celebration I attended in Los Angeles, spoke of the transformations that Martin Luther King, Jr. went through as he grew to be the person who would ultimately change America. Dr. Wilson acknowledged how that transformation had to do with race, describing Dr. King’s mindset as he entered Morehouse. Dr. King actually felt, at that stage in his life, that the Christianity taught to him was emotionally rich yet intellectually poor. As he grew in his thinking, he later realized that he could be an intellectual as well as a respectable minister of the Christian faith. This realization led to his unwavering commitment to non-violent protest as a way to demonstrate the inequity in how African Americans were treated by a country and government that proclaimed that “all men were created equal.”
It is my personal belief, and one shared by many others, that Morehouse College may have shaped Dr. King’s vision more so than what has been typically written. The Historically Black College/University still serves African Americans in a manner that no traditional institution can.
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