I must have walked by this sculpture hundreds of times on my way to class.
Sometimes it gave me pause if I wasn't late and the wind wasn't whipping off the Charles River as was often the case on this Boston campus.
Martin Luther King, Jr. attended B.U. School of Theology some decades before I walked the same halls. His ethos permeated the place, and sometimes his words echoed, too.
This preacher-activist-student steeped in civil rights of the 1960's amidst violent protests for justice and against war, lived well beyond those current events when I was coming of age at that time.
"Current Events" was a required class in my high school and one that I looked forward to having been an avid news watcher alongside my mother in front of the TV in the evenings. Information came into the little living room via one of three networks. She had her favorite. I trusted what I heard. It bore out in the classroom. The news wasn't easy listening in the 1960's when violence was escalating across the country from campus to campus. Leaders du jour were combating well-entrenched beliefs about "others" who did not belong in American civil society. "Civil Rights" became the catch-all for those who tried to break through barriers that segregated and separated people into categories. On the evening news, I saw students my own age and younger firehosed by Boston police on their way into schools just blocks away from the BU School of Theology where the student, Martin, worked out his thoughts that would propel him into a life we remember each year on January 20.
Years and years later, when I walked the long and dank corridors of that oldest building, the cornerstone of BU's founding, I tried to see this black man bounding up the stairs. Could he have imagined himself going forward from that place to take his place as a leader in a concerted fight against age-old discrimination? Could he see himself jailed in such places like St. Augustine, Florida (where I live now) which he said at the time was the "most rascist city in America"? Did he understand how his own words that stirred the hearts of so many also stoked the anger of those opposed to his non-violent message? Would he have known in his own heart that he would meet with an untimely violent death? Much can be read into his famous "I Have a Dream" speech to shed light on his private thoughts and prayerful beliefs. It is well worth our time to see and hear his prophetic message at such a time as this, most especially this January 20. https://vimeo.com/35177221
Once in a while between my classes in conflict resolution and practical theology, I wandered up to the third floor of the Mugar Library to see some of Dr. King's papers held there in perpetuity. His typewritten words appeared like any other student's dissertation, except those words have been immortalized, like the young black man who captured current events then and now.
book excerpt timothysnyder
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