Rev. Samuel D Proctor Martin Luther King Day Speech 1995

thank all of you so much I will not give you today a full account of our speakers accomplishments because it would take up all of my allotted time and all of his allotted time as well I will say to you that I tell young folk and older folk as I've moved around the state that you got to be real careful how you influence people because you influence people that you don't even know that you're influencing and you got to take responsibility for what you make them do our speaker today is such a person suffice it to say that by any measure of greatness he certainly is great whether influencing those of us throughout North Carolina as he rolled around the countryside in this state several decades ago recruiting not just recruiting but convincing young black boys and girls that there was a reason that they ought to go to college a reason that they ought to achieve in high school in elementary school whether it involves his duties as the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City his duties as the past president of Virginia Union University and as I've alluded to president of North Carolina A&T State University he now serves on the faculty of the Duke University Divinity School where he still influences people even when he doesn't know all of the faces and names of those people that he influences but he's also served on faculties throughout these United States the Faculty of the United Theological Seminary Boston University Rutgers Virginia Union Vanderbilt and yield he is a noted author a noted scholar an electrifying preacher and a moralist and a revered sainted figure for our times you know there are only two ways that you can achieve these distinctions you might achieve them by specifically striving for them or you might achieve them by striving for something higher the Reverend dr. Samuel Proctor came by these awards and distinctions in his personal pursuit of a higher moral standard some of you may remember hearing dr. Proctor just last June when he spoke at our legislative Black Caucus prayer breakfast I especially remember one thing out of the teaching that he gave us that day and I'll quote spiritual maturity comes when you begin to set higher goals and become aware of what the human spirit is capable of that is a fitting teaching to recall as we celebrate commemorate and rededicate ourselves going into this King holiday Martin Luther King jr. tested the limits of the human spirit by setting the highest moral standards he didn't merely aspire to be good he aspired to be perfect he didn't say I only hit him after he hit me he said I didn't hit him at all so not only am i less to blame I have no blame at all non-violence is the highest standard because if your cause is wrong you've only hurt yourself but if your cause is right you help all humanity as he said in a speech if he doesn't beat you wonderful if he beats you you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating if he doesn't put you in jail wonderful nobody with any senses likes to go to jail but if he puts you in you go to that jail and you transform it from a dungeon of Sheen to a haven of freedom and human dignity and even if he tries to kill you you develop the inner conviction that there are something so dear something so precious something so eternally true that they're worth dying for and I submit to you if that a man has not discovered something that he will die for he isn't fit to live Martin discovered something that he was willing to die for and that was for the highest standard of love and morality that's the lofty standard dr. Proctor talked to us about and that's the lofty standard that he represents this weekend all across the nation people will give tribute to Martin Luther King jr. and as the legend grows the sincerity of some of these tributes shrinks some people were praised him for politics some will praise him for profit and yet others will praise him for their own personal gain but we here in this church this afternoon are blessed in a special way of the thousands who will pay tribute to Martin Luther King jr. over the next several days few few if any are as worthy spiritually or as worthy morally or as worthy ethically to pay that tribute as a man who comes to speak to us today a man who lives and teaches the highest moral standards my friends I present to you our pastor our president our professor our preacher our friend and our patriarch the Reverend dr. Samuel D Proctor I'm very grateful to the Honorable Daniel T blue jr. Speaker of the House for these most generous words of introduction and to this excellent say governor James B hunt to the Honorable Dennis a wicker the Reverend barber the executive director of the Human Relations Commission and to our esteemed presiding officer today sister Carolyn Coleman to the Honorable Robin Britt and all of you who represent the legislature the state offices who here and especially my good friend brother Graham who brought me the North Carolina a long long time ago and all of you who have taken time out of your day to be here with us as we commemorate the life and work of Martin Luther King jr. let me say how pleased I am and how honored I am to be here to have these words of tribute to say I'm glad to be here and after a triple bypass open heart operation I'm not only glad to be here I'm glad to be anywhere I have a program here with the time limits posted when I should have begun to speak and when I should finish and I'm getting up 20 minutes later than when I should have got enough so I want to apologize the interview who have to be back at one o'clock but all you have to do is say that you were with the governor that's all right - your supervisor has he got any problem with that and all what a governor we have I was so inspired to hear his words I just can't believe that in the light of today's political climate we have a governor who would stand here and say the things that he said today it lifts our hearts doesn't it and I'm gonna tell somebody they ought to run this band for the presidents of the United States Martin Luther King jr. the right person at the right place and at the right time we're all being prepared now to listen once again to the repetition of Martin Luther King's great speech made in August of 1963 I will give some five or six Martin Luther King memorial addresses and I'm going to hear little schoolchildren and choirs and all sorts of people reciting over and over again now I have a dream and this is wonderful to hear such sonorous rhetoric such lofted phrases and then we're going to compare these words with the live situation through which we're living right now and it may cause some of us to become cynical and discouraged that there's such a disparity between what King was talking about in his dream and what we're seeing today in the reality of our society right now I was at that speech I was in my office in the Peace Corps building talking to Bill Russell the celebrated basketball great we were talking about Russell helping us to recruit black students for the Peace Corps and he was about to accept our invitation and all of a sudden we looked at our watches and said oops we'd better get out of here it's about time for King to start speaking and Bill Russell and I walked from the Peace Corps building over to the Lincoln and because I was with him I got one of the best seats in the place the ushers were hustling him up to the front and I stayed close to him and there I was looking right up in Kings face and hearing every word there are a few times in life when we seem to be lifted out of our existential context and wafted into something ethereal and that was one of the moments of my life I had heard everything that King had said before I knew King well had been in all sorts of close conversations with him even when he was a student that crows a seminarian at Boston University but those 250,000 people and all of the other speakers and entertainers who were there and the moment the time the Kairos moment caused that event to be a transforming experience for my life and like folk who got religion I'll never forget the day and now and something hit the crowd of my head and went through the soul of my defense I have never been the same since and so we've got to hear that again during this season of remembrance for Martin Luther King and we're going to become heartbroken because of some of the ugliness that we hear in today which the governor made reference us a moment ago but if I can succeed that the very few minutes in helping you to see Martin Luther King again through the prism of these times and see his life reflected against our days then I shall have succeeded for these few minutes Martin Luther King jr. the right person there are many people who would like to be famous like King many people have gone to the great universities and prepared themselves but nobody can replicate exactly what King brought to the moment that confronted him look at it dr. V Williams his grandfather was an outstanding Baptist minister in Atlanta and it was in his home that Martin Luther King grew up in the Kings home was a place where people would visit because in those days remember black people could not use the hotels and motels around Atlanta and ready to stay but you stayed with the presiding elder or with the bishop or in some big preacher you stayed in someone's home that had been provided by the people and so the pastor's house was like the Atlanta Hilton or the Holiday Inn you couldn't say no because it wasn't your house anyway and so King would tell us that he'd come home from school and see almost anybody sitting at the dinner table in Mary McLeod Bethune you know how would Fuhrman monetize Johnson's had in Tobias and he said all they had to do was come and drop his books and stop listening imagine four young fellah 12 13 years old to come home and see Charles Houston sitting at the dinner table in his home you can order that you can't buy that with a Visa card I'll tell you that's something very special to grow up in the home of dr. AV riddims then his mother way back in those days was a graduate of Spellman college an accomplished musician she was playing the organ you remember when she was assassinated she was playing melot's Lord's Prayer as a prelude for the service when a demented young man shot her in the back and what a sainted woman she was King did not grow up poor now that does not detract from him he didn't he had nothing to do with that he belonged to a family that have already succeeded and we've got to watch that closely because I'm awfully afraid that some of us have romanticized poverty to the extent that we we don't like to hear that some black folk did pull up with three meals a day and a refrigerator stocked with frozen foods and telephones you see I have some young students in the university who think that it does the dishonor for a black person to have good credit on the telephone that operates you know and they think that all black football to be marginal and poor and you know one of my students at Rutgers said to me dr. Proctor here you keep making references to a hunch he grew up in one of those communities in New Jersey and he said did you grow up in a house I said I think I hear the import of your question you probably thought that all black folk want to grow up in a public housing project and thank god we've got public housing projects but I grew up in a house it was built by my grandfather who was a contractor he and mr. Stoney and mr. big John Smith would take Hampton Institute students and had them in Northup on an internship and they--but built scores of houses in Huntersville and the house still stands there 9 18 Fremont Street built by young black students from Hampton under the supervision of my grandfather I was born and reared in that house it was built in 1919 and today it does not lean to one side the roof is still on it it's still that and black for Bill they did all the pastoring all the plumbing work all of the electrical work and we've got young black folk today who talk about and go into business I wonder where you've been my vegetable man was black the Iceman was black the tailor was black no white man touched my life until I left home except to sell my daddy a used automobile imagine that the dentist was black the mortician was black everybody I dealt with was black so I grew up believing that black folk could do anything so Martin Luther King did not have to read that in a book somewhere he knew that from his earth a childhood experiences because he was surrounded by black folk who took their circumstance and then transcended it by applying their aspiration and their ability in their character through whatever it was that life had dealt to them then he went to Morehouse College now you know it isn't easy for me to say anything good about Morehouse College I'm not a Morehouse man but I must tell you more house has left all of us in deep debt because of the mob or the service that it is rendered across these years King went there when he was only about 15 years old and if you talked with him for a short while you'll know that he remembered everything that happened to him at Morehouse College Morehouse has a certain spirit to it I was there not long ago for Founders Day address and when I finished my speech and sat down the president got up behind me and said if there's a disease and they're all hotter right back at it will you cure it he said if there's a mountain they're all hot real climate if there's a problem they're all hot he'll solve it if there's a river we'll cross him I said this is not a cottage this is a state of being this is a call but Morehouse did that to the minds of people been amazed mean every one of those young Morehouse men believed that he had to do something extraordinary for the human enterprise and Martin Luther King imbibed deeply of the Morehouse spirit then the very word Morehouse Morehouse Henry Tom Morehouse was running around raising money to give young black boys from the clay Hills of Georgia a liberal arts education when everybody else was thinking that door to be taught harder you know shoe horses of how to grow three potatoes in tobacco and you know Morehouse said you've got to have people like that to help us to make a living make no mistake about that but they said you also have to have a leadership cadre the show us which way is up which way is forward to give us direction and somebody said you're wasting your time raising money the T sees young black boys Plato and Socrates and analytic geometry and all of that and Morehouse responded and I'll tell you where I found this quotation in a little book called the history of the Baptist's by Miles Mark Fisher that he wrote when he was right here teaching in sharra University you ought to find that book if you can reading that book I ran across this comment from Henry L Morehouse he said I believe in the Thera Humanity of the black man capable of culture capable of higher team at the sufficient time and under proper circumstances not a being for ordained to be a you of wood and draw water for the white race predestined irrevocable inferiority but a being whose mind and soul can expand indefinitely to comprehend the great things of God and to take a place of usefulness and honor in the world's activities and if you woke me up three o'clock in the morning and said Sam what did Morehouse say I could tell it to you thus to me it's a kind of a Magna Carta for black folk way back there in 1869 somebody saying I believe in the Pharaoh humanity of the black man that was the spirit of Morehouse and Martin Luther King imbibed a bit deeply then ever the Crowes a seminary you didn't go to close to 7:00 and sit around and memorize Bible verses they didn't go about it like that before you started studying the Old Testament you had to piece the whole world of the tigris-euphrates piece it together you had to know about Assyrian religion and Babylonian religion and persian religion and and know the whole greco-roman world and then you put Judaism down in the matrix of that culture and when you started the New Testament you didn't stop with heritage John the Baptist's or no you started with Alexander the Great and the solution Empire so you could work yourself into heroin in the times of Jesus and then you started studying the Sermon on the Mount that was Kings kind of Education see King was one of those persons who knew that there was a God before they ever was a Bible hello so when you heard and talked there was a strange kind of authenticity about his religious ideas and you wonder where did that come from well that doesn't fall from trees you work hard at that you work hard at it then he went to Boston University United Methodist Church has always stood out in front making application of the Christian gospel to the social scene they remember that Jesus said love the Lord your God with all of your heart mind soul and strength best personal salvation then you love your neighbor as yourself that social salvation and they kept them couple coasts together that's the kind of education King brought for Boston University then he studied Gandhi he was a great student of Gandhi and non-violence and I remember one day I was down there with King we were asleep night had been a rough day during the bus boycott back in 55 or 56 and the Deacons knew of King's philosophy non-violence but I don't think they believed in it because they were out on the front porch all night long keeping watch with softball bats you know and let him dropped his back and he fell asleep you know Pam I heard the noise and I rolled right up out of my bed you know Magna levitation I just harbor something just that's right I went out front there the demon was still drooling he didn't even know he dropped the back I said beaten you scared me to death I went back and I wanted to say ask King was he alright and he lived in the parsonage you know man you know how the houses are that they provide for pastas is the doors no it didn't hang right you could see a whole inch of light shining underneath the door I said mighty you all right he said yeah Sam come on in open the door Coretta was stone sleeping on the edge of the bed and he was on this side of the bed leaning out of the bed 3 o'clock in the morning with a lamp on reading Paul Tillich's book entitled courage to be 3 o'clock in the morning all he was the right person the right person when the moment came god had this RAM in the bush ready for higher service then he was at the right place governor Wallace bragged about the fact that Alabama was the most segregated State of the Union blue collar bragged about the fact that Birmingham was the most completely segregated city I've never been in a place that segregated the elevators before I went to Birmingham I mean four elevators right there and one was for all the black folk to go up and down yes in Birmingham sheriff Clarke bragged about the fact that his part of Alabama was as clean and white as snow well there he was in Alabama at that critical moment at the right place and for you who are so young and I know how many of you are so young you should see this audience many of these young people weren't even born when Martin Luther King was assassinated I found that out that's why I take great delight in trying to fit in some of these details because I was there that's the only bad as I know and being old I was around you see for twenty years before the Civil Rights Movement and then around another 20 years I'm like brother Graham will be in another 20 years after the civil rights movement so I can tell you about two worlds that I have seen out here in my own life and you would not know how things were you see the Rosa Parks was caught in this situation the the white people fill up the bus from the front going back and the black people filled it up from the back coming falling but if there wasn't anybody on the bus you could just sit down in the way you wanted to it was all right nobody bothered you so she just sat down she was tired she was sewing for some rich people and in those days a lot of people that money just didn't buy tools ready to wear off the racks they had seamstresses many of them were black people who would get these McCall's patterns you know and make dresses for people and so that's the part of what she did but she was another kind of person also she had aunt all of the Institute's and the meetings she was active in the n-double-a-cp she was an alive and alert person responding to the times but the bus driver didn't know that he just saw fire sweet face black woman no blue eye shadow on her eyes no chewing gum no cigarette her hair was combed back and a soft bun that was Rosa Parks see and there she was on the bus the bus driver had ample opportunity to leave that woman alone and gone and drive his bus and hope that she would get off there in a hurry she was the wrongest person in the world for him to ask to move everybody thought of her and being a safe now there were some women he could have asked to move and we never would have had a civil rights movement we had some women in Norfolk maybe that some of them to move they would have said look here man if you want me to move you move me and then she would take a nap I'm out of a bed and throw it up in the air and pull out a razor and peel it on the way back good now you want me to move you move me and we never would have had a silver rifle move all of us and still be going in the back door the hotel you'll all be mail boys over here the Statehouse but because it was Rosa Parks you see the most conservative and passive people when they found out that Rosa Parks is we're in jail oh no and that Montgomery Improvement Association you know how middle-class black folks are they like to sit around unready on the motion I move the previous question and they were sitting around you can tell by the name of it the Montgomery Improvement Association they'll go too fast but that night when they came together that's the church this is Rosa Parks they will transform I mean something had happened that was greater than the sum of its parts you know like Pentecost and up everything that's here and still something greater is out there and they said this is the time and they said who lead us and King told us about that many times over one man said I've got a brand-new mortgage I can't do anything about this another one said my wife has just been appointed a new job we'll be at the cottage I can do it everybody had an excuse and they said Mike you the youngest one in town you don't have any enemies yet you've got a PhD they don't want a black PhD in jail around here and your dad and your mama can get you out of jail if they put you so Kingman calling up people all over the country what should I do he hadn't planned on going to jail he had planned on being a civil rights leader all of us who knew him knew what King had on his mind he wanted me to president of Morehouse College that's where he was headed he said Sam I want to be an intellectual black Baptist preacher like Howard Thurman and Benjamin Mays and miles more efficient people like that Vernon Johns they were his idols he didn't have in mind being a Marcus Garvey Oh No but that night when they met he found out that his moment had come the right man and at the right place and he had to respond and then it was the right time 39 pieces had been won by black lawyers before the Supreme Court 39 pieces the last case was one just before King started marching and remember there were 39 cases one before King marched one step don't forget the fact that King already had a legacy that he inherited be very careful about how you forget the people who've gone on and laid the foundation Kings stood on the shoulders of a whole lot of brave and courageous people when those lawyers went all around the country fighting these cases couldn't go to the bathroom couldn't buy a sandwich had to live in drag in their houses wherever people would let them live and they kept fighting and they never were able to save much money people talk about Supreme Court justices this one got 20 million Thurgood Marshall didn't have anything but the salary he got from day to day because he gave up a lot of that fuss and then came Martin Luther King after all of that groundwork had been laid you hear me and so it was the right time because all the legal work had been done all of the legal person area had been taken care of all we needed then was for somebody to come and be a kind of plastic enough to break the old mold to challenge the more to make things come new you know when that Synod movement took place you know where I was the day when the Synod movement began I was present of a nd college all the college presidents had gone to Maryland Steve to have a big meeting we went up there to meet to talk about football we got there to agree on certain things we were going to instruct our coaches on what the votes are when the CI double-a meeting was held we're not going to change the linen but once when you bring the visiting team we're not gonna let the swim in the statisticians come so many cheerleaders so many band members all of us nobody was absent the whole CIA contingent was there and while we were meeting a man came and knocked on the door what a terrible interruption eating steak filet mignon Oh plates the Lord rapist ankle-deep carpets beautiful hostesses they had ordered from all around to be temptations there's a virus that must fear was laid out for massive meeting everything was in place and this man said there's a phone call for president Gibbs from a antique college Gibbs was the gentleman he got acquirement tipped out of the room he came back looking like all of his blood had rushed to his feet you had no call at all 250 students were in jail it started out with 4 and it kept on locking them up to 1 then right after that president alder there's a call for you from Darren alder got up to the phone came back supervision one phone call right after I was present of Union Samuel Proctor phone coffee I had to get up to open all of us not in our Buicks and we creeped on out of there like a bootleggers funeral now don't forget now while we walk there all these presidents with these PhDs are get about football the students were over here turning the world upside down all the legal requisites smokin no place for race in America 14th amendment had been lifted up and dusted off we were enjoying all the benefits of that all the citizens of the several states shall be entitled all of the rights and privileges of the census all that was done and society remain just as it was somebody had to step out and say enough is enough and Rosa Parks was the one who did thank God Martin Luther King was there ready o prepared to move and take the next step now you know one we don't know what happened at the bus driver and we found the woman who didn't serve the students in there over here they NT and we brought her back from Ohio you remember that she came back with a blue hairdo oh just stop she was 1 ABC CBS CNN and everything she said I wanted to serve the boys but the manager told me I couldn't she was on television everything so we know where she is she's in Ohio we didn't get her anything I'd be Wanna but we can't find a bus driver somebody said when he found out he started the civil rights movement that changed the world he shot himself somebody said he jumped in the river and drowned himself and somebody said he became a recluse and just not lost and didn't want to hear about it we don't know but when the moment came thank God Martin Luther King was there with all of the mental acuity all of the moral stamina a strange kind of indefatigable energy a kind of a prophet in his own time and he did it well he's gone now god bless his memory but let me tell you who it was and told me that King was dead I thought of it an airplane got out of an airplane in Dallas on my way to a meeting there at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Dallas the Office of Education asked me to go down at the lecture two white teachers on how to teach black students they acted like you know they didn't know how to do that sighs what I man tell him it was possible you can do it you put your mind to it you can do it I was ready to give my speech to the white teachers I got in the tab big black guy I was standing out there directing people he said hey Mac - what a cat my name was not mad and I started to tell him my name was not mad but he was so big I decided to be mad for a moment and I got in the cab all right then I looked at the driver the driver was he was drawing on that head on some cheap sunglasses and he said to me mister he couldn't even speak English mister must be you don't know what doesn't happen today and I thought it was cool I'm kind of a dirty political trick and I said what did happen today he started trembling and shaking he said somebody killed Martin Luther King today I said are you kidding me I leaned up looking right in the face you turn around he started shaking the trembling he stopped the cab he said somebody shot dr. King in Memphis today a poor white boy in Dallas Texas with the wet cigarette butt tattoos long dirties yeah he is the one who said to me that Kings life had been taken from him when I got to the hotel I was praying to God and I found myself ending up saying mate you may wonder if you made your point but let me tell you who told me that you were gone home to be with the Lord who could hardly speak English make you shook his whole world and he couldn't even drive this God telling me that you were dead so don't worry let me tell you what else happened a white man from Spartanburg North Carolina called me one day it's a practice do you think Kim is adequately insured I said I doubt it he doesn't think about money property lives dangerously high no he doesn't this man was a retired missionary from Burma he was a part-time agent for that American Baptist ministers and missionaries pension board Proctor we have some extra money that we can use to pay the premiums for people who are worthwhile and have not had their churches to get started I'm sure his church hasn't thought of that he investigated found out called me back up Proctor Kingdom having insurance and I want to get him covered a tall thin white man with a bald head seventy years old from Spartanburg they're all around the South following King he told happinesses why I've warned all of them I'm not from the FBI I'm not a Ku Klux Klan thermal I'm trying to get him covered with the pension and they said get out of here white man all you think about is money we're thinking about justice he called me back he said Proctor they don't believe me I called up Wyatt tee Walker and I said T when the man comes around let him get the kid I called Abernathy I did right let him get to him he's trying to help him to get cover next time you got them and they say here comes the man the Sam talk about Martin England called me and said I got inside done if we want to cover him and I don't nobody want to cover him but we want to treat it as though he'd been in there all the time we've got a brand to cover him because he didn't have enough resources in the church to do that fine in neither days time King was dead Coretta gets a pension right now her health coverage has been secured for her the children all of these years because a tall skinny white man 70 years old from Spartanburg South Carolina kept following King for one city to another until they got him signed up when I hear people say nothing good can happen no hope for real community in America I'm sorry that your information is so skimpy I happen to know that there are all kinds of signs out here that we can do it this great nation 260 million people down together not by a dictator no not by one party system down together by certain ideals these people coming up talking about a new contract with America you don't need a new contract we've got an old country we got an old contact it starts out by saying we hold these truths to be self-evident Oh presence of is the old concept you don't need a new concept and start living by the whole contract everything's gonna be all right Thank You dr. Proctor we have certainly all been challenged there will be for those of you that can remain a brief reception immediately following the service in the fellowship hall downstairs you should enter the hall from my right please exit there in the hosts and hostesses will direct you would you please stand and sing we shall overcome followed by the benediction by the Honorable Robin Britt Secretary of the Department of Human Resources and we probably Lord your servant Martin Luther King left us with these words hatred paralyzes life love releases it hatred confuses life law of harmonises it hatred darkens life love illumines it Lord move on us and in us through your power that we may become instruments of love not hatred that we might release life instruments of love not hatred that we might harmonize life instruments of love not hatred that we might illumine life we pray in the name of Jesus Christ

Channel: Nicholas Rosshirt

Views: 31,501

Rating: 4.753623 out of 5

Keywords: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (Holiday) Samuel DeWitt Proctor (Author) Christianity (Religion)

Id: KK2MK8Y_pSA

Length: 47min 14sec (2834 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2015