Martin Luther King's impact on the world

An excerpt from NBC Meet The Press aired April 6, 2008

<iframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/23981403#23981403" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

I went through the five appearances of Martin Luther King here on Meet the Press. This one is from April of 1960. And it's particularly appropriate in light of the discussion we've had with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and some of things said in black churches. Here's Dr.King talking about the differences between white churches and black churches and what happens at 11:00 on Sunday.

Dr. King, how many white people are members of your church in Atlanta?

I don't have any white members, Mr. Van de Landen.

Well, sir, you said integration is the law of the land and it's morally right while segregation is morally wrong, and the President should do something about it. You mean the President should issue an order that the schools and the churches and stores would all be integrated?

I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, at 11:00 on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, not the most segregated hours in Christian America. I definitely think that Christian church would be integrated, and any church that stands against integration and that has a segregated body is standing against the spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it fails to be a true witness. But this is something that the church will have to do itself. I don't think church integration will come through legal processes. I might say that my church is not a segregating church. It's segregated, but not segregating. It would welcome white members.

Dr. Dyson, 40 years later, we still have segregated churches?

It's so true. The quote Dr.King was citing there was ____ who was the dean of Yale divinity school, a white man. So, even in his acknowledgement of this segregated social hour, Dr.King was acknowledging a tradition that has been acknowledged by white liberals.

But here's the tragedy. In black churches, things were said and done that may offend or somehow surprise the broad ___ of white Americans. But the white church kicked the black church out, so to speak. The black church began in racial politics when the white church subordinated its theology to its politics, black people had to leave because they didn't wanna worship equally.

Black people then celebrated God in different ways, but they also, many similar ways to white American, but they also articulate the rage, the grief, the pain, the suffering, the agony. And they tried to transmute that pain, suffering, agony in light of their commitment to God.

When you heard the Jeremiah Wright, what you heard was the latter-day Martin Luther King Junior. When you hear Barrack Obama, you hear Dr.King of the 1965.

In black churches, Martin Luther King Junior said, "We are been subjected to American genocide." He also went on to say that he didn't want to be treated the same way the Japanese brothers and sisters did when they were put into concentration camps.

And the sermon he was going to deliver, Tim, the next Sunday where he delivered, found in the effects after he was murdered was a sermon called "Why American may go to hell?" That's the Martin Luther King Junior was which the broad ___ of America is not familiar and they don't even sing in the black church, the articulation of theological tradition that response to hatred doesn't respond in hate but prophetic anger and then ultimately love, love enough to speak justice to the nation. Justice is what love sounds like when he speaks in public. And Martin Luther King Junior did this when he talk specifically to black churches.


more to come...

_M#]