Guest Author - Sandy Mullins



Martin Luther King Day is fast approaching and I will admit that for years me and my children participated in marches in Phoenix Arizona, trying to get the holiday passed. No, I am not an African-American, yet I believed in everything that Martin Luther King Jr. worked for his whole life. Arizona was a little stubborn about passing the holiday and paying its employees for the day off. We were joined by probably a thousand valley-wide youth and adult Baha’is. I was a young child when he and others marched in the South. I know that had I been raised there I would have probably, against my parents wishes for my safety marched then too. Having spent a lot of my childhood in South Phoenix, where most people of minorities and a good part of the lower income whites lived. I saw the good and the bad of all races, and learned at an early age that ethnicity did not make a person bad. I guess being a lower class white girl, I felt the pain of not being accepted. Granted my family, weren’t slaves or discriminated against, I felt the pain of the children and agony growing up. I stepped forward and defended children that others picked on because of their color, so accepting a faith that has a major principle of equality for all had to be a center-point for me. I realized early on that, my religion denied people of all colors the same opportunities or destinies.

So with the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, I wanted to share some of the writings I found, talking about him.

“Nor was this change merely one of formal and administrative character. As time passed, growing numbers of outstanding figures in every walk of life would escape the familiar limits of racial, cultural or religious identity. In every continent of the globe, names like Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., Paolo Freire, Ravi Shankar, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Kiri Te Kanawa, Andrei Sakharov, Mother Teresa and Zhang Yimou became sources of inspiration and encouragement to great numbers of their fellow citizens. In every department of life, heroism, professional excellence or moral distinction would increasingly be able to speak for themselves and be embraced by the generality of humankind. The world-wide outpouring of affection and rejoicing that was to greet the release from prison of Nelson Mandela and his subsequent election as president of his country would reflect a sense among peoples of every race and nation that these historic events represented victories of the human family itself.”
(Commissioned by The Universal House of Justice, Century of Light, p. 74)

“In its letter of 23 January 1985 concerning the International Year of Peace, the Universal House of Justice urged Bahá'í communities to reach out to the non-Bahá'í public by finding ways of discussing the important issues of peace with others. One way to make such discussions relevant and effective is for the friends to know and acknowledge and pay just tribute to persons whose lives were dedicated to peaceful means of bettering social conditions.”

“One such person was the black American Martin Luther King, Jr., whose promotion of non-violent means of achieving racial equality in the United States cost him his life.The positive effects of his heroic efforts brought encouragement to downtrodden peoples throughout the world and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Four years later he was assassinated. His aspirations 675 for a society in which the races can live in harmony are perhaps best expressed in the famous speech he delivered at a gathering of Some 250,000 people in the capital of the United States in 1963. (...) Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Baptist minister who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his assassination on 4 April 1968 at the age of thirty-nine. In 1963 he led a march on Washington, DC, to achieve civil rights by non-violent means, and there delivered his celebrated "I Have a Dream" speech. Toward the end of his life he broadened the scope of his efforts to oppose the war in Vietnam and to include poor people of all races.]”

“The House of Justice has asked us to call your attention to Dr King for these reasons. His widow, Mrs Coretta Scott King, a non-Bahá'í, has written to the House of Justice that a national public holiday has been officially designated in the United States in honour of Dr King. She intends to make an appeal that on 20 January 1986, the first observance of this holiday, "nations and liberation movements all over the world cease all violent actions, seek amnesty and reconciliation both within and outside of their national boundaries, and encourage all of their citizens to recommit themselves to work for international peace, universal justice and the elimination of hunger and poverty in the world." The House of Justice feels that Mrs King has a noble intention to which the friends can lend their moral and spiritual support. Since the date on which action is desired falls within the International Year of Peace, Spiritual Assemblies may consider holding peace conferences on 20 January, or close to that date, and naturally include in the presentations at these conferences references to the life and work of Dr King. An alternative might be to devote the Bahá'í programmes on World Religion Day, 19 January, to peace and on these occasions pay tribute to Dr King.”
(The Universal House of Justice, Messages 1963 to 1986, p. 674)

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