King’s Message of Love Lingers

Martin Luther King Jr., the assassinated civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner whose birthday this nation celebrates today, may be better known for his speeches than his sermons. But, first and foremost, he was a minister.

His sermon “Loving Your Enemies,” delivered in 1957, still resonates today as Americans reflect on his accomplishments and unfinished business. His message remains as instructive for warring nations as for feuding neighbors.

King spoke on a November Sunday from the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, according to “A Knock at Midnight,” a collection of his sermons. Not quite a year after the Montgomery bus boycott had ended, at a time when his home had been firebombed, the Ku Klux Klan marched publicly and death threats were made against him routinely, he told his congregation that he would rather die than hate.

He preached, “The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. . . . “ This lesson, intended then mainly for black Americans who would brave beatings, fire hoses, dogs, even bullets in their fight for equality, remains powerfully applicable for all today.

In Southern California, the most diverse region of the world in terms of population, old hatreds and new disputes challenge the ability to get along. Conflicts erupt everywhere, including schools.

At Grant High School in the San Fernando Valley, more than 200 students brawled last October during a lunchtime dispute fueled by long-standing ethnic tensions between Latino and Armenian students. Last Thursday, students signed a peace treaty. They promised to respect all students at Grant, where more than 25 racial, ethnic and language backgrounds are represented in the enrollment. They agreed to talk out differences and resolve disputes through trained student mediators. Principal Joe Walker hopes they will discard traditions of dislike and suspicion and learn the lessons King taught before they were born.

Such tensions are not unique to Grant. Los Angeles school board member Caprice Young will propose later this month an annual census of public high schools to determine whether students experience violence or face prejudice on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability. Results of the hate survey could give the district a baseline from which to measure positive or negative change. The information could help the district prevent the kinds of conflicts that King abhorred.

Had he lived, Martin Luther King would have celebrated his 71st birthday this year. On the evening of his death, April 4, 1968, one of his daughters, Yolanda, asked, “Mommy, should I hate the man who killed my daddy?” His widow, Coretta Scott King, according to her autobiography, told their daughter, “No, darling, your daddy wouldn’t want you to do that.” To his death, he championed love over hate.