- [Simon] Jesus gave the world a new tune
when it came to enemies,
relinquish violence in favour of love.
Someone who truly embodied that radical teaching
to great effect as a Baptist preacher from America's South.
He led the fight for civil rights for African Americans
from 1955 until his assassination in 1968,
the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.
On August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
in Washington DC, King delivered a piece
of rhetorical brilliance that became a high point
of the Civil Rights Movement.
Under the gaze of one great emancipator,
he would unfold his vision of another social revolution.
250,000 people gathered here for the march on Washington,
a massive rally to demand civil
and economic rights for African Americans.
It was late in the day, and King stepped up
to the microphone and delivered
his unforgettable "I have a dream" speech.
- One day right there in Alabama,
little black boys and black girls will be able
to join hands with little white boys and white girls
as sisters and brothers, I have a dream today.
(crowd cheers)
- [Simon] Littered through the speech were
allusions to Shakespeare,
famous folk songs, the Declaration of Independence,
and especially the Bible, have a listen to this:
"I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted,
"every hill and mountain shall be made low."
That's straight out of the book of Isaiah.
Or what about this, from the prophet Amos?
"We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down
"like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."
King wasn't just a great orator.
His whole approach to the battle
for civil rights was shaped by his faith
and his understanding of the profound
ethic of love at its centre.
- Martin Luther King was able to apply
the Christian notion of love
and connect it to the Gandhian method
of nonviolent resistance in a very powerful way.
The idea that you can resist a system
but still love individuals and treat them with respect
and honour, the idea that evil must be resisted.
It should never be normalised,
and the idea that
mass nonviolent action can be a force
for powerful change is a set of principles
and a message that I think will endure the test of time.
- King began his journey into the leadership
of the Civil Rights Movement here
at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
in Montgomery, Alabama where he was thrust,
reluctantly at first, into the limelight
as a key leader of the Montgomery bus boycott.
- [MLK] For several weeks now, we, the negro citizens
of Montgomery have been involved
in a nonviolent protest against the injustices
which we have experienced on the buses
for a number of years.
This is a nonviolent protest.
We are depending on moral and spiritual forces using
the method of passive resistance.
- One night when the Montgomery bus boycott had gotten
started, he received a telephone call
from someone who said that
he was gonna be killed,
his family was gonna be killed,
his house was gonna be bombed.
It was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back.
He just sat down at the kitchen table
with a cup of coffee and said a prayer,
which basically was, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do good,
"but I'm losing my courage."
And he said he heard a voice speaking to him, saying,
"Martin Luther King, stand up for what's right,
"stand up for justice, and I will never abandon you.
"I will never leave you, I'll never leave you alone.
"I'll never leave you alone."
And for King, that kitchen table experience
became for him the rock-solid basis for his activism
even though he knew as his life went on and on
that he was not gonna die in bed.
- [Simon] The boycott was ultimately a success.
But in the middle of the struggle,
King's house was firebombed
with his wife and baby daughter inside.
They escaped unharmed, but the event enflamed the tempers
of King's supporters. That night,
an angry mob gathered at the front of the house.
Imagine being part of that crowd,
surrounded by men with sticks and guns
and shovels determined to exact revenge.
Ready for action and watching
as Martin Luther King comes out.
He told them to go home.
It's an extraordinary reaction.
And he urged them to love their white brothers
no matter what, and called on them
to follow the example of Jesus and to meet hate with love.
King would be arrested and imprisoned dozens of times,
his life threatened, his character smeared by the FBI.
But he became more and more convinced
that nonviolent resistance was not only
an effective political tool but a whole way
of seeing the world, one that emerged from his faith.
- For many people in the Civil Rights Movement,
the nonviolence was a tactic, a political tactic,
which they accepted as important.
But for them, they did not adapt it
as a way of life as King did.
For King, non-violence was not simply a tactic.
It was a way of life that reflected the Creator
in whose image and likeness all of us were made.
(gentle music)
- [Simon] It's impossible to miss the fact
that the entire premise of King's philosophy,
and the hard discipline of nonviolence,
relied on the resources of faith
found in the African American church.
It was a costly exercise, people lost their lives.
But those involved were sustained
by a deeply held belief that in acting this way
they were playing the tune of Jesus,
in harmony with the very nature of the universe.
- Christian faith, at its very heart, is about grace.
I think that that's not controversial.
Grace that gives without seeking in return,
and grace that gives also in situation of injury
which we call forgiveness.
And I think if you take grace as fundamental
to Christian faith, then you see how fundamentally
it works against the violence.
Generosity toward the others,
forgiveness of others' injuries,
reconciliation as a kind of a modality
of restoration of human beings
to what they were originally created to be.
All of that is central to the Christian faith.
Put it to be as central in practise and you'll have
a major contribution to a peaceful world.
