The Power of Vision

The window in the pastor’s study at Ebenezer Baptist Church in January 1970 provided a view of a large, vacant inner city lot, certainly not prime Atlanta real estate. It was a sunny lot, but otherwise matched the general condition of the neighborhood around the Baptist Church.

Four college students had come to talk with Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., about the ministry his church provided in the inner city. The window was behind his desk and Dr. King turned his chair so it was always within his view, although he never looked directly through it. There was not activity on the lot, yet he seemed to be addressing something on the other side – something larger than we could see. As he talked about the church’s programs, Dr. King would mention his son, Martin, Jr., and his wife Alberta, who later would also be violently murdered in the sanctuary of that church. He discussed his loss openly, and yet we were filled with a sense of his tremendous dignity, serenity, and vision rather than a sense of grief. He began to tell of the new ministries for Ebenezer Church, most particularly the construction of a resource center named for his son, Martin Luther King, Jr. He described a plaza with fountains, a gathering place, not a monument, and, as he talked, the empty lot began to change in our eyes and our minds.

It became a place and time long past when ancient people gathered at desert wells, temporarily casting aside their differences and mistrusts in search of the precious water which would sustain them. And it became a place and a time yet to come, when people of all walks of life would gather to share ideas, to serve as each other’s resources, and to build foundations of peace and understanding. It became a time when people would choose, as Dr. King had, to let go of their own sufferings n search of something better for all mankind.

A decade later, this empty lot did indeed become part of the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Sight and Center for Social Change. I am not sure if Dr. King was talking to his son or to an idea when he looked through the window that day, but I am sure of what he saw. I remember knowing that I was in the presence of a man of vision for perhaps the first time in my life. And, at that moment, I saw the vision shared by a father and a son, and I, too, shared their dream… “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of George the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…”

To Carmen

I remember the only black child in the class on the first day we painted. The other children tried lots of colors on the paper and made all kinds of shapes and designs. Alexander went to the easel last, interested only in white paint. He held it on the brush and looked at it and never looked at the paper. He began to paint his hands, first the palms carefully, then fingers, and finally turned his hands over to coat the backs with thick while paint. I suddenly realized that he was not using the paint “correctly”, even though I had been as absorbed in what he was doing as he had been. I said, “Alexander! What are you supposed to be doing with that paint?”
The teaching assistant rushed past me to interrupt and say, “Look, Alexander, look at the way it covers your fingers and fingernails.” She talked with him, and with me, and together we helped him paint his arms up to his elbows, almost up to his shirtsleeves. I can see the concentration on his face as he pressed his white handprints on a sheet of paper. And I can feel his excitement as he washed the white paint off with lots of soap and rushing water, free again to choose the person he could be.
I left that day strengthened and reassured in my new role, a new educator in a child’s world, free again to be the teacher I choose to be.