WASHINGTON -- For the 70 or so people who rode 13 hours from Atlanta to Washington on a bus chartered by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the trip was a dream fulfilled.
Today, they will join thousands of other visitors for the dedication of the long-awaited Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The ceremony comes two months after a hurricane delayed the original dedication and years after advocates began the quest to get the memorial built.
“I came on this trip because I love him,” said Martha Davis, whose baptism into the civil rights struggle was more than a half century ago.
For some of the riders, the journey was the culmination of their own civil rights activism. For others it was a chance to see an old friend and mentor forever idolized in granite. And for many of them, it was an opportunity to encourage the next generation to take on the mantle of leadership.
King’s monument beside the Tidal Basin is the first such memorial to an African American and ensconces him on the National Mall among the nation's greatest leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR.
For Atlanta, the monument to the city’s most revered native son is personal.
“When I see it up close for the first time, it’s going to bring tears to my eyes,” said Nadine Proctor, a longtime union organizer and volunteer with the SCLC, the civil rights organization founded in 1957 with King as its first president.
Like others on the bus, Proctor is a certified foot solder of the Civil Rights Movement. These veterans earned their stripes through years of marching, boycotting and protesting -- sometimes being beaten for their trouble.
All of them have stories, and some of those stories include chance interactions with King.
Today their hair is gray, their shoulders are stooped, and their faces carry the deep-seated creases that testify to lifetimes of experience. But back then, many of them started young enough to be considered children of the movement.
Davis, 67, was a youngster in the crowd when King came to Rome, Ga., to speak. She started working behind the scenes at the age of 16, attending midnight meetings to help plan fundraisers for bail money to free young, black students arrested for protesting.
“I was always behind the scenes, but I always loved Dr. King,” she said.
Larry Lewis started in the movement at 14 years old when members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee came through his hometown of Milledgeville, Ga. They were on their way to Selma, Ala., for a boycott.
“I though they were marching to fight, and I wanted to fight,” he said. “But they explained to me the nonviolent concept and I started organizing and have been doing it ever since.”
Lewis, like other SCLC old-timers, wears a medallion around his neck with an image of King alongside praying hands and the words “I have a dream.” He grips the emblem fondly he talks of the old days.
“Those were tough times back then, and more times than not we were scared,” Lewis said. “But we had courage. To do the things that had to be done, you had to have courage.”
Rolling northeastward Friday night, the riders quickly became a pseudo-family. They shared food and laughs, comparing notes on commonalities such as hometowns, distant relatives and colleges.
As the hour grew late, they divided into two groups: sleepers in the front and a raucous crowd in back. In the last few rows, some of the organization’s workers still in the field, including the SCLC Georgia president, the Rev. Samuel Mosteller, delved into a wide range of topics.
They spoke of Elvis Presley (stole his sound from black musicians), home cooking (young women can’t cook anymore) and the Obamas’ infamous fist bump during a 2008 campaign speech (impressive).
But gradually they grew quiet, until the only sound was from videos of civil rights legend Rev. Joseph Lowery’s 90th birthday celebration and the late SCLC national president, Howard Creecy Jr., speaking at a National Baptist Convention.
Finally, with the sun rising, the final movie of the trip was, fittingly, footage of the 2009 inauguration of the country’s first black president.
For Proctor, 65, this bus ride recalled another one. In 1963 she paid $20 for a seat on a Trailways bus to travel with her cousin from college in Pennsylvania down to Washington for the March on Washington. On that trip, she heard King deliver the legendary “I Have a Dream" speech.
“I wasn’t going to miss that, and I wasn’t going to miss this either,” she said.
In addition to King, many of their stories are laced with references to long-gone and legendary contemporaries of King, including Hosea Williams and Ralph Abernathy. But they also talk of the future and their hopes for those who follow them.
Those younger generations have not always been eager to pick up the torch.
Rev. Benford Stellmacher saw reluctance in his own son, who criticized him years ago for being too involved with the SCLC and its activism. But when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Stellmacher’s son apologized for his criticism and thanked his father and others like him for paving the way for the election of a black president.
“I broke down and cried,” the father said. “To hear my own son say that after all the work we had done, that was the proudest moment in my life.”
Stellmacher’s son has gone on to a leadership position in the Democratic party in South Carolina.
George Kimbrough Johnson, at 40 one of the group’s youngest members, said a vision impelled him to become a foot soldier for equality.
“God told me in a vision to take up the torch and follow Dr. King,” said Johnson. “This trip is an outpouring of what God has in store for me through civil and human rights.”
Johnson is a very green, but eager, two-week SCLC volunteer. His cause: equal rights for the disabled. Health problems associated with diabetes led to three operations on his right foot and a pronounced limp.
“Looking at me you wouldn’t know that I’m disabled,” he said. “Going through all of this has shown me that covert racism still exists, especially with equal rights for the handicapped.”
For their parts, the grizzled pioneers said they are buoyed by the wave of activism they see in the Occupy Wall Street protests, propelled mainly by young people and spreading throughout the country and to cities around the world.
“This is the beginning of an economic injustice movement,” said Robert Johnson, 63.
Johnson was raised in the SCLC. He gave up a college scholarship to Alcorn State University in Mississippi to participate in the marches and activism of bygone days.
For him, the King memorial "symbolizes the dedication of a people, including those whose names will never be called, who sacrificed for this. This is a ceremony for all of them -- and the young people need to see this.”
Forty-eight years after the "I Have a Dream" speech, a towering memorial has been erected to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
as a man of peace among the many monuments
to wars and presidents in the nation's capital.
Financial disputes
Rave reviews
About the Author
