In December of 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white person on the bus she took on her ride home from work. And she was arrested.
Parks was charged with violating Montgomery, Ala.’s, segregated bus seating law.
Soon afterward, the Montgomery bus boycott was organized and the “Montgomery Improvement Association” came into being.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, was asked to become the president of the MIA, because he had been the voice behind the boycott from the start.
King accepted the presidency and soon became the focus of white racists opposed to equal rights for Afro-Americans and the civil rights movement in general.
A fateful night
On Monday night, Jan. 30, 1956, King was speaking at a meeting at Montgomery’s First Baptist Church organized to support the bus boycott. Every seat was taken, with 2,000 people standing around the walls and into the stairways.
The bus boycott was a couple of months long now, and King was tired. The long walks, the threat of violence always against him, was wearisome.
When the boycott began, he had delivered a speech that lit a fire, and for the next six weeks, King would preach, and the people would listen.
They had gathered because they all knew they were challenging segregation and white supremacy. Together, they found solidarity, courage and hope. This was a moment for them to come together.
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Consider, also, that Martin Luther King Jr. had just turned 27 years old.
While King was speaking, his wife and firstborn daughter, Yoki, were home. Suddenly, a bomb, planted on the front porch of King’s residence went off and blew out the windows of the house and caused significant damage to the front porch of the family home.
King saw that his close friend, confidant and advisor, Pastor Ralph Abernathy, was receiving notes during the service, and finally, King asked him what was going on.
“Your house has just been bombed,” he said.
Not knowing if his family was OK, dead or alive, King stepped up with his customary public calm demeaner and asked the crowd to go home in peace. He left out the side door and went home.
But understandably, the people did not go home in peace. Instead, when King arrived at his home, he found a crowd of Black brothers and sisters with sticks, knives and guns in his front yard with a barricade of white policemen keeping them from his house. The officers’ presence did not improve the mood of the crowd gathered.
A stunning instruction
A week earlier, Clyde Sellers, Montgomery police commissioner, publicly joined the White Citizen’s Council, which effectively made the Montgomery Police Department an arm of the Ku Klux Klan.
As King walked through the destruction of the front of his house, inside he found reporters, the police chief and the fire chief, and Coretta and Yoki, shaken but unhurt. Members of his church already were there, surrounding Mrs. King and their 10-week-old baby.
Outside, no one was leaving, not until they knew King’s family was OK. Clyde Sellers began to panic. He grew increasingly concerned as the scene outside was about to escalate into something they were not prepared for.
Commissioner Sellers asked King, “Will you speak on my behalf to the crowd?”
Rev. King said, “Yes.”
He stepped out on the ruins of his small white house, and here’s what he said:
“Don’t get panicky. Don’t do anything panicky. Don’t get your weapons. If you have weapons, take them home. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what Jesus said.
“We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love.”
King’s character
This one incredible moment revealed, not only the character of this young 27-year-old pastor, but also the power behind his world-changing work that was to come.
King could have incited a riot. He could have justified violence against those who sought to kill his family. He could have refused to help the man who was joining forces to stop all King stood against.
He could have settled for a short-term win, while losing the long-term victory. He could have sought to appear “strong and courageous” by verbally taking down the chief and the authorities—and he clearly had the verbal skills to do so.
Instead, King pointed to the One who truly was in authority. He pointed to his own nonviolent King, who had changed his heart and had revealed another way.
King could have just sent the people home to fight another day, instead of teaching them how the battle would be won in the days ahead. His response serves as a model of leadership for us all today.
What King teaches us
Consider what Dr. King teaches us from this single event. He showed us:
• True strength is seen in what might look like weakness.
• True leadership is found in what might look like abdication.
• True courage is revealed in what some might think is cowardice.
• True victory is attained in what might seem like surrender.
• True love is displayed in what looks like foolishness.
King taught us true change comes by following the paradoxical way of his King, Jesus.
He later would preach, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Enemy love is the way of Jesus, most explicitly taught in the Sermon on the Mount and ultimately revealed on the cross. This was the way King sought to live his life.
May King’s life and legacy call each of us to the way of enemy love, as we live to see the Dream become a reality in our time.
Jeff Warren is the senior pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.
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