10 Easy Things You Could Do On MLK Day To Honor the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1. Listen to a whole MLK speech.

When we only see the popular quotes pulled from his speeches, we are in danger of consuming a sanitized version of Dr. King that makes us comfortable. Listening to Dr. KIng’s words in full protect us from distilling his speeches down to platitudes.

2. Read Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

This letter is uncanny in its timelessness. Dr. King’s eloquent words, written from a jail cell, echo through the decades to call us out of our commitment to a kind of “negative peace” that ignores injustice.

3. Read articles from The Guardian’s series on Anti-Racism.

I particularly appreciated Ibram X Kendi’s piece on building an Anti-Racist America and Robin DiAngelo’s on our tendency as white people to equate niceness with being “not racist.” I would say that my commitment to “niceness” and to being perceived as a “nice person” has been the single greatest hurdle in my journey towards eradicating racial bias from my own dark heart. Whenever I am more worried about whether someone thinks I am nice or about if we can all just be nice to one another, I am clouding my vision from being able to see the insidious white supremacy in the room, especially if it’s coming from me.

4. Read this article from an agent of mercy being arrested at our southern border.

A quote:

The truth is that the “soul of the nation” has been deeply disturbed for 500 years. Despite rhetoric in our founding documents that “all men are created equal,” the legacy of our history is one of deep denial. We all live on stolen land and reside in a society built from stolen labor. Our country was founded on the legacy of dispossession and settler colonialism, rooted in a belief that some are deserving of rights, but only some.

5. Watch 13th or Selma.

6. Donate money to an organization that is devoted to justice and that is run by a person of color.

Two organizations I love right now that are doing amazing work are Bryan Stevenson’s Equality Justice Initiative and Susan Burton’s A New Way of Life. If you want to be compelled by the work of these two individuals, they both have amazing books out that detail the work they are doing: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and Becoming Ms. Burton by Susan Burton.

7. Order The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby.

This important book, which I’ve already talked about on the blog, releases tomorrow.

8. Support a business in your town today that is owned by a person or family of color.

This is an easy one! If you eat out or shop today, be intentional about spending those dollars in a way that makes a tiny dent in the enormous racial wealth gap in our country. (If you live in North Little Rock, you could eat lunch at Lindsey’s BBQ. I get the catfish platter every time!)

9. Follow Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice King, on Twitter.

I am amazed at how she is both consistently a voice for justice and manages to give wisdom that is unfettered by bitterness. She honors both of her parents’ legacies with grace.

10. Join The Poor People’s Campaign.

This campaign is literally the continuation of Dr. King’s unfinished work. It’s based on a campaign by the same name that he started shortly before his life was taken. Being a part of this campaign has been an incredible learning experience for me. I would say one of the most important things I have learned is how much more complicated and lengthy the process is towards lasting change. I think it’s easy to simplify Dr. King’s life (and the Civil Rights Movement), but walking through the process of being involved in the PPC has helped me greater appreciate the long slog it is to push against racism and injustice.

Thank you Dr. King for working to see God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is heaven, even unto death. 

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MLK50: Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop

“There’s a wreath at the Lorraine Motel.”

“We are not children of God apart from loving one another.” 

“This is a great conference but it’s still just a conference. Let’s not give finish line praise for getting to the starting line.”

 “The reason that you are so comfortably able to honor the prophets is that they cannot speak to you any longer.” 

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I want to be a part of creating a greater awareness about our nation’s dark history, not just slavery, but the way that slavery evolved from generation to generation. I want to be a part of de-throning white supremacist rule, and I believe that creating awareness is a step towards that end. It doesn’t seem like we can create justice without looking honestly at the ways we’ve been unjust.

This is a quote from EJI’s website about the purpose of this project:

To create greater awareness and understanding about racial terror lynchings, and to begin a necessary conversation that advances truth and reconciliation, EJI is working with communities to commemorate and recognize the traumatic era of lynching by collecting soil from lynching sites across the country and erecting historical markers in these spaces. 

In February 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative issued a new report documenting over 4000 lynchings and so began a soil collection project to mark those lynchings:

While collecting soil from the site of a lynching is a simple gesture, we believe it is an important act of remembrance that can begin a process of recovery and reconciliation to our history of lynching and terror. The named containers with collected soil that we create become important pieces of our broken and terrifying past. We believe these jars represent the hope of community members who seek racial justice and a greater commitment to the rule of law and human rights.

EJI has documented 492 African American victims of racial terror lynching killed in Arkansas, so when I moved back to North Little Rock last fall, I got in touch with EJI and asked if I could participate in collecting soil for any of these victims.

Earlier this year, I received my first instructions for the collection of soil in DeWitt, Arkansas for a man named Mr. Frank Dodd. A couple of Saturdays ago, I drove over to DeWitt with two friends to do the collection. The site of Mr. Dodd’s lynching was unknown, but he was taken by a mob from the Arkansas County Jail, which is now the site of the Arkansas County Circuit Clerk’s Office, so we were asked to choose a tree in the square as a symbolic place to gather soil for Mr. Dodd.

We walked around the courthouse before choosing our spot. My friend, Sarabeth read Nehemiah 9 aloud to us. She had been studying it that week and was particularly struck by the laments the Israelites prayed for the sins of their ancestors.

As three white women collecting soil on behalf of Mr. Dodd, we certainly felt it was applicable to lament the sins of our ancestors.

As we stood in the square, I read aloud the story from EJI about Mr. Dodd’s murder, which I will include below in full.

Then we prayed, lamenting this life that was taken, lamenting the way racism and white supremacy have torn apart families and destroyed so many lives. We lamented the way it sometimes seems that the legacy of racial terror has bequeathed to us a nation so steeped in systemic racism that we cannot ever find our way to true equality.

It had rained the night before we arrived, and the air was still hanging heavy with water. The soil we collected was a dark clay-like mud. We dug it up from the ground beneath trees that were old enough to have born witness to the mob that gathered there in 1916.

I hope to one day visit the memorial in Montgomery that is opening this spring. I’ll look for the jar that we sent to remember Mr. Frank Dodd and I’ll remember the wet March Saturday that we drove to DeWitt to fill it.

My prayer is that many generations will stand after me in front of it. My prayer is that we will reckon with our history in a way that causes us to stop repeating it.

Dear Lord, forgive us.

I hope more people read Mr. Frank Dodd’s story. I hope many people visit the memorial in Montgomery and read EJI’s report on Lynching in America. I hope to see a day when black parents no longer have to warn their children that our American society does not value them.

Frank Dodd
Arkansas County, Arkansas, October 8, 1916

On October 8, 1916, a mob of about 300 white men broke into the Arkansas County Jail and seized Frank Dodd, an African American man, from his cell, determined to lynch him. Several news reports said that Mr. Dodd became the lynch mob’s target on the accusation of “having annoyed a young white woman.”

According to news accounts, the evening before Mr. Dodd was lynched, he encountered two white women, who passed him in a wagon, and asked them for a ride. Later, one of the women accused Mr. Dodd of insulting her in the course of their interactions and that it was not until she screamed that a nearby white farmer chased Mr. Dodd away. Although Mr. Dodd was not accused of harming anyone, he was later captured by the deputy sheriff and eventually transferred to the Arkansas County Jail in DeWitt.

During the era of racial terrorism, whites’ allegations against black people were rarely subject to serious scrutiny and often sparked violent reprisal. Whites’ fears of interracial sex further stoked racially based hostility and extended to any action by an African American man that could be interpreted as seeking or desiring contact with a white woman. Though the woman had claimed Mr. Dodd ‘annoyed’ her, some sensationalized white newspaper accounts accused Mr. Dodd of “assault.” During this era, “assault” allegations against African American men were often based on merely looking at or accidentally bumping into a white woman, smiling, winking, getting too close, even being disagreeable. In Mr. Dodd’s case, the mere accusation of “annoying” a white woman was enough to arouse mob retaliation.

On October 8th, a white lynch mob of as many as 300 white men formed at the jail and seized Mr. Dodd at gunpoint. Although police officers were charged with protecting those in their custody, white officers rarely used force to resist white mobs intent on killing black people. The lynch mob took Mr. Dodd to the “outskirts” of Dewitt, hanged him from a tree near the local African American community, riddled his body with bullets and left it suspended from a branch. Members of the neighboring African American community later retrieved Mr. Dodd’s body and delivered him to the care of his wife and a local undertaker.

Just two months before, another black man had been abducted from the Arkansas County Jail and lynched. Surviving reports don’t indicate that anyone was ever arrested for either murder.

Frank Dodd was one of at least 18 African Americans victims of racial terror lynching killed in Arkansas County from 1877-1950. Philips County was the only county in the state with more documented lynchings.

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After the election, I was reading the news, lamenting on Twitter, and trying to listen to the voices that I felt were most marginalized by the comments our newly elected president had made on his campaign trail.

Listen and lament.

Listen and lament.

But after about a week, I was drowning in a sea of despair. I was starting to think I was going to have to shut the internet down, but I also felt like it would be an unacceptable exercising of privilege to close my ears and eyes to the emboldened racism and rampant hate-related instances unfolding all around the country.

So at some point, I was moved (probably by the Holy Sprit) to type into my Google search bar something to the effect of: Black Christian Perspective On Election Results.

Somehow my search led me to an article you wrote about feeling betrayed by white evangelicals in the wake of the election. You explained that for your white brothers and sisters to ignore the racist rhetoric was to dangerously underestimate the power of words and the impact they have on the groups which the rhetoric is intended to marginalize.

And then you ended with these words.

Because of Christ, I am willing to be part of a body that constantly underestimates the ongoing impact of racism. Because of Jesus, I am willing to associate with believers who outright deny systemic and institutional forms of inequality based on race. Because of our unity in the Spirit, I am willing to fellowship with believers who rebuke me for my honesty, and accuse me of sowing division because I speak of difficult subjects. I am still here. Bear with me if I sometimes long to worship with people who share not only my theology, but my pain as well.

As a member of a church that is trying to bridge racial divides, I do not take lightly the willingness of anyone from the minority culture to worship with me.

I have grown to understand how much people of color have given up in order to participate in racial reconciliation, in order to walk back into to churches from which their parents and grandparents were actively excluded.

So I was humbled by your willingness to remain part of a body that “constantly underestimates the ongoing impact of racism.” And it reminded me again that the black people in my church have to face the same struggle, worshipping alongside a group of believers who have (in some numbers) voted for and continue to support a president who is stripping away any small steps of progress towards equality.

As a result of landing on that one article and reading several others, I began to faithfully listen to the podcast Pass the Mic, where I began to hear you and Tyler Burns discuss issues and culture from a distinctly black Christian perspective.

Which is a perspective this white girl needs to hear.

The longer I listen, the more voices I hear. And the more I learn.

Through your podcast, I also grew to know and love the Truth’s Table podcast.

You also introduced me to the writings at the blog (Black Perspectives) of the African American Intellectual History Society, where I have read countless stories and been introduced to new books that have grown my world exponentially.

I could go on and on, but mainly I just wanted to write and say thank you.

Thank you for your willingness to keep engaging with a community that consistently   underestimates the ongoing impact of racism.

Thank you for creating spaces where I can learn. I know that those spaces are not for me, but I am grateful to be invited along to listen and open my heart.

I hope you will keep writing, speaking, reading, tweeting and holding truth for us all to see.

With gratitude and grace,

Alison

A note to my readers:

If you want to check out the podcast, Pass The Mic, here are a couple of my favorite episodes:

This interview with Andy Crouch is a particularly great listen for white folks. Note: the podcast’s target audience is black listeners, so if you’re white, you might be asking yourself why you would join a conversation that is not for you? One good answer is that when I am in a place where my own experience excludes me from understanding what the speakers’ have encountered, I am being let in on something special. I get to listen and learn.

Bryan Stevenson (interviewed here) is a national treasure. Seriously, I think in 100 years we’ll be talking about this guy like we do Ghandi.

And if you are involved in any kind of racial reconciliation in churches, the 4-part series that Truth’s Table did on this topic is required listening. This one with Laura Pritchard is my favorite.

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