LINKS:
QUOTES: Martin Luther King
I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH AND VIDEO
WE SHALL OVERCOME: Historic places of the Civil Rights Movement
ROBERT GRAETZ'S BOOK: A White Preacher's Message on Race and Reconcilliation
Years ago, I sat in Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery Alabama and watched a young service woman speaking with an elderly gentleman in the front pew: One was white; the other was black. Fifty-five years ago that encounter most likely would not have taken place. I imagined the space filled with voices of Martin Luther King Jr. and crowds gathered in prayer supporting the Montgomery bus boycott.
It began with Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, who along with other women mimeographed thousands of flyers asking Montgomery Blacks to boycott buses on the day Rosa Park's case was heard in court. The boycott's success encouraged the black community, and the following day many gathered in Dexter Avenue Church, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, and spurred on by its newly elected leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., called for a citywide bus boycott.
When we visited the museum at Dexter Ave. Baptist Church and watched historic newscasts, my young adult children expressed horror at scenes of protesters being attacked by dogs and thrown to the ground by water blasts from fire hoses. For many adults today, the early Civil Rights movement in this country is ancient history.
That reality prompted me to invite Rev. Robert and Jeannie Graetz to speak in my adult Even Start Class. He had accepted his first assignment as a Lutheran minister in Montgomery Alabama the same year Martin Luther King Jr. became pastor at Dexter Ave. The only white minister to publicly and actively support the bus boycott along with Jeannie, his family's home were fire bombed and his life threatened. Their neighbor, Rosa Parks, helped clean up the mess left by the bombs and took a neighborhood collection to replace tableware smashed in the attack. Read More
QUOTES: Martin Luther King
I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH AND VIDEO
WE SHALL OVERCOME: Historic places of the Civil Rights Movement
ROBERT GRAETZ'S BOOK: A White Preacher's Message on Race and Reconcilliation
Years ago, I sat in Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery Alabama and watched a young service woman speaking with an elderly gentleman in the front pew: One was white; the other was black. Fifty-five years ago that encounter most likely would not have taken place. I imagined the space filled with voices of Martin Luther King Jr. and crowds gathered in prayer supporting the Montgomery bus boycott.It began with Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Women's Political Council, who along with other women mimeographed thousands of flyers asking Montgomery Blacks to boycott buses on the day Rosa Park's case was heard in court. The boycott's success encouraged the black community, and the following day many gathered in Dexter Avenue Church, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, and spurred on by its newly elected leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., called for a citywide bus boycott.
When we visited the museum at Dexter Ave. Baptist Church and watched historic newscasts, my young adult children expressed horror at scenes of protesters being attacked by dogs and thrown to the ground by water blasts from fire hoses. For many adults today, the early Civil Rights movement in this country is ancient history.
That reality prompted me to invite Rev. Robert and Jeannie Graetz to speak in my adult Even Start Class. He had accepted his first assignment as a Lutheran minister in Montgomery Alabama the same year Martin Luther King Jr. became pastor at Dexter Ave. The only white minister to publicly and actively support the bus boycott along with Jeannie, his family's home were fire bombed and his life threatened. Their neighbor, Rosa Parks, helped clean up the mess left by the bombs and took a neighborhood collection to replace tableware smashed in the attack. Read More