Bzzz!" The Monday morning alarm clock buzzer is an annoying reminder. It is the clock's way of saying "The weekend is over." But this past Monday was different -- we could sleep in. Monday was a gift from the federal government: Martin Luther King Holiday. Did you notice all the MLK events that the College planned?
I figured I should contribute to the celebration by finding out why we received one more day of sleep. I talked with one of Dr. King's top aides: Andrew Young, former Ambassador to the United Nations, Congressman, mayor of Atlanta, Vice Chairman of Law Companies Group and reverend.
Ambassador Young has spent more than 35 years in public service. President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young as the United States Ambassador to the U.N. He was forced to resign in 1979 after it became known that he had met with a member of the PLO. Today America negotiates with both Israelis and Palestinians. Mr. Young was 20 years ahead of us.
Mr. Young's journey, however, started in south Georgia. Following his graduation from Howard University and Hartford Theological Seminary, Ambassador Young started working with Dr. King. As Young told it: "Martin started in Montgomery, and I was pastoring in Thomasville, Georgia. We were both invited to speak at Talladega College. I met him there; he invited me to stop at his house on the way back. We stopped and spent time chatting."
Why celebrate Martin Luther King? According to Young, "Martin channeled the rage and frustration that might have threatened the fabric of our society into a nonviolent approach that did not destroy either person or property. He is the only one of our founding fathers that resolved his issues without resorting to violence." One example of Dr. King's nonviolence, Young recalled, was when "Martin was leading the bus boycott in Montgomery. They bombed his house. Coretta [Dr. King's wife] had just picked up the baby from the front of the house to take her to the kitchen for some milk. The bomb hit in 1956. This incident occurred after blacks had returned from the Second World War. Most blacks had weapons and were trained in violence. When they showed up outside Martin's house to retaliate, he made an eloquent statement: 'We have to find another way.' An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth will leave the world blind and toothless."
Much of Young and Dr. King's ideology comes from Gandhi. When I asked how Dr. King first was exposed to Gandhi's teachings Young told me, "The Indian independence happened right in the middle of Martin's college education in 1947. President of Morehouse College [King's alma mater], Dr. Mays and a number of other black college presidents went to India for the celebration. They came back talking about Gandhi's nonviolence."
There has been a divergence among Dr. King's disciples, however. There is the Jesse Jackson approach and then there is the Ambassador Young approach. I asked Ambassador Young whether Jesse Jackson had strayed from MLK's path: "I think Jesse and his message tend to be a little too self-centered." How has Ambassador Young continued to stay the course? "I started reading Gandhi when I was 18, before meeting Martin. I work at it. It does not come easy. Right now, I am struggling with this Iraq war. I have learned a good deal from the Vietnam and Korean wars." Ambassador Young continued, "Saddam Hussein is a megalomaniac. You cannot let a man like this develop nuclear weapons within three hundred miles of 30 percent of the world's energy reserve."
I then jumped to my beloved free word association game, which Ambassador Young kindly obliged me with the following words: Ivy League: "Elitist." Dartmouth: "Conservative." Harvard: "Snobbish [chuckle]." President G.W. Bush: "A truly average American trying to rise to greatness." Coretta Scott King: "A loving mother who tried to keep a family together during life-threatening pressures." Kofi Annan: "Quiet and powerful statesman." Colin Powell: "A great individual who has come up from the Bronx to City College of New York to Korea to Vietnam to the Gulf War. He should be Time Magazine's Person of the year for 2003."
As for advice that Ambassador Young would like to impart to us college students, he says, "Take your time. Enjoy your life. Be patient. You are learning as much sometimes when you are playing as you are when you are working. And it is a good time for you to learn about people while you learn the subject matter of your major. It took Jesus until he was 30 to figure out who he was."
So while you are thanking Uncle Sam for an extra day of sleep, please let the real reason be known. Two peaceful reverends, Martin Luther King and Andrew Young, did not have opportunity to sleep. And their message still lives on, both in our lives and in our dreams.
