My name is Adrienne Brewington. My maiden name is Martin. I am the daughter of Chris and Frank Martin,
the granddaughter of Harriet, Henry, Daniel and Irene. Great granddaughter of Priscilla, who was
born a slave when General Sherman was burning the South. I have been to college, and law school and
seminary. I am taking the first, tentative
steps of living a great man’s dream.
When I received the invitation to address you today, I thought I I would speak of the ways in which the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has affected my life. As I pondered the question, I found that, at first blush, it is a difficult question to which to respond meaningfully.
You see, I was only ten years old when Dr. King died.
I remember the day very well. I was sitting on my bed, watching television and playing with my dolls, when a news broadcast broke into the regular programming. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot to death on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, TN.
Four years later, I entered High School. Four years after that, I entered the college of my choice – Fordham University College at Lincoln Center. Some years after that, I went to the Law School of my choice -- Rutgers University School of Law in Newark, NJ. Three years later, I began the job of my choice as an Assistant District Attorney in Bronx County. I enjoyed a 13-year career as an attorney before leaving the practice of law to assume my first full time pastorate. I was that church’s first non-white pastor. I was their first woman pastor.
You see...?
I have lived an ordinary life full of the things that any person ought to be able to expect to enjoy. How do I even know whether the work of Martin Luther King has affected my life – let alone how?
I have some memories to guide me in answering that question...
For example, I remember 1963.
That was the year that Medgar Evers was shot to death in Mississippi. It is the year that Dr. King wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It is the year that Dr. King led the march on Washington and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. It is the year that a bomb killed four little girls like me at a Birmingham church.
I was a five-year-old kindergartner that year, the year when president John Kennedy was assassinated. My father, a federal employee, was released from work once the news spread, and he came to school to get me.
I remember that he walked to the school from our house, even though we had two cars. And I remember standing at a particular corner waiting for the traffic light to change and listening to my Dad try to explain to me in words I could understand that the president was dead and why it was that people sometimes did such stupid things as kill each other.
And I remember the day of the funeral I walked into the back room of our house – the room where my mother always did her ironing. The ironing board was up. A wicker laundry basket stood next to it. But my mother wasn’t ironing. She sitting on the sofa watching the president’s funeral, tears on her face. And when I spoke to her, she asked me very quietly to please go away and leave mommy alone for a little while...
Six months later, three civil rights workers went missing. Two months after that, they were found murdered. That same year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ask me what effect Dr. King’s work has had on my life....
I remember a childhood friend whose father grew all kinds of fruit and vegetable trees and bushes and vines in their back yard. On a summer afternoon we would go back there and eat green apples and unripened grapes and string beans and blueberries and gooseberries until we were sick.
And I remember putting on a production of “The Princess and the Pea” in somebody’s garage.
I remember a neighbor who always had the best fireworks on the 4th of July.
I remember fireflies at the end of summer, and learning how to swim, and going to the book-mobile every Wednesday afternoon of a summer to take out a new book, and block parties and eating home-made ice cream that tasted like heaven after churning it for what seemed like forever. And I remember the Williams boys, who were much bigger than I, who always took over the churning after smaller arms gave out.
A perfectly ordinary life, lived in perfectly ordinary Lakeview, Long Island, while all around me the world was churning up. The world was changing. My horizons were expanding. And I don’t remember that, because I didn’t know...
I remember the things my parents taught me:
That my time has value. That practice makes perfect. That you do your home-work before you turn on the T.V. That the only proper way to wash a floor is on your hands and knees. I learned these and other life lessons well...
And so I remember very well the day I was sitting at our kitchen table while my mother combed my hair, and hearing her voice say behind me that it was probably better if I didn’t play with a particular child I knew, because his people weren’t quite our kind of people...
I know that each lesson was lovingly taught, in an effort to enrich me and improve my life.
Other people taught their children similar lessons. I know this because I had friends at school with whom I did not socialize after the 3:00 bell. The father of one girlfriend in particular would not have me in his home. The mother of another friend refused to allow me into her house to see her daughter because she had other company. I remember she came out of her house and pulled her front door behind her and stood on her front step as she told me to run along home.
Where did this woman acquire such an attitude? From her mother, my friend’s grandmother. I know this because on another occasion the grandmother had told me to leave the house and not to come back.
I remember these things. And I have other memories, as well...
One of my earliest memories is of walking a picket line with my parents. That was the same year that Malcolm X was murdered, and Dr. King led the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march.
And then there was this one particular day...
In the next town over from where I grew up there was once a Department Store called Abraham and Strauss. When I was a girl, before the mall was such a popular place to be, A&S – which is what everybody called it – was such a big, thriving place that folks came from all over Long Island and parts of Queens to shop there.
One day when I was about 6 years old, my mother took my younger brother and me to A&S. She needed to shop for drapes for our living room.
The drapery department at A&S was enormous. And it had rows and rows of sample draperies that hung from the ceiling all the way to the floor. While my mother shopped, my brother and I ran up and down the rows of drapes playing hide-and-go-seek.
That night, my mom bathed me and put me to bed as usual. She listened to my prayers, and tucked me in and turned out the light. But instead of leaving the room, she sat down on the side of the bed. And I will never forget the words she spoke to me.
She said, “I know you will not understand this, but there are people in this world who will think that you are not as good as them. They will think it because you are a Negro. What they think about you is not true. You are as good as anybody. But you will have to try very hard to be a very good girl so that you don’t give anyone a reason to think you are not as good as them.
Ask me what significance Dr. King has had in my life...
I attended elementary school in Malverne, NY. I was sent to a particular school as a consequence of court-ordered integration. The school I attended was, at that time, named after a former Grand Cyclops of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Clan. The first day of school in that new place, my mother went to work late, because she followed the school bus in her car and waited until I was safely inside the school building before going on her way.
I remember getting off of the bus that morning. A lot of noise – yelling. I remember especially walking between two rows of black boots belonging to the men who were there to protect us.
That was, I believe, the same year that Dr. King was pelted with rocks and stones as he led a march for open housing in Chicago.
The events that form these memories are the indicia of the world that Dr. King was working to change. But if you ask me in what ways Dr. King has most influenced my life, my answer will probably be this: I have had the privilege of living a perfectly ordinary life...
Yet, James Weldon Johnson has, quite prophetically, put my ordinary life in perspective for me:
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
Do you see? ...
I might like to deceive myself that my life has been ordinary. But, my memories, when I engage them, overrun my self-deception. My life has not been ordinary at all. It has been a life marked by incidents of violence and bigotry.
And the rest of the truth is that my perception that my life has been ordinary is only possible because Dr. King’s work helped create a world in which I could have an ordinary life.
The sacrifice was great. The sacrifice was great because Dr. King – and those who were truly his followers – committed themselves to a course of nonviolent social action. This commitment made them the object of scorn and ridicule and violence from every corner – even from other African Americans who believed that violence was the only way to overthrow the corrupt social systems that supported this country’s system of racist apartheid.
Dr. King said, just a few weeks before he was assassinated, “I plan to stand by nonviolence because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, with my own self.”
These are the principals to which Dr. King committed himself:
That: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
That: Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate. Nonviolence believes that the Universe is on the side of justice.
That nonviolence is active, resistance to evil. That nonviolence is aggressive spiritually, mentally and emotionally. That nonviolence is always persuading the opponent of the righteousness of your cause. That nonviolence is only passive in its non-aggression toward the enemy. That nonviolence accepts suffering, if necessary, but will never inflict it. Nonviolence accepts suffering without retaliation. Nonviolence willingly accepts the consequences of its act.
That unearned suffering is redemptive, and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. That suffering has the power to convert the enemy when reason fails.
That: Nonviolence resists violence of the spirit as well as of the body. Nonviolent love is spontaneous, unmotivated, unselfish and creative. Nonviolent love gives willingly, knowing that the return might be hostility. Nonviolent love is active, not passive. Nonviolent love is unending in its ability to forgive in order to restore community. Nonviolent love does not sink to the level of the hater.
That: Love for the enemy is how we demonstrate love for ourselves. Love restores community and resists injustice. Nonviolence recognizes the fact that all life is interrelated. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win. Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice.
These are the radical ideas and practices that have won me my “ordinary life.”
Dr. King taught us that nonviolence first transforms the person who embraces it. That nonviolence is radical in the deepest sense of the word because it changes the spirit behind attitudes. Once the spirit of nonviolence is internalized, goals like domination, conquest or retaliation no longer drive behavior. When this happens the stage is set for a dramatic transformation of relationships.
And the world does change.
In the words of Dr. King...
"Like an idea whose time has come. Not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom. I know you are asking today how long will this take? Somebody is asking how long will prejudice blind the visions of men? I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.
"Because truth crushed to Earth will rise again. How long? Not long.
"Because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long.
"Because you shall reap what you sow. How long? Not long.
"Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future, behindeth them unknown standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own.
"How long? Not long. Because the arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
"How long? Not long. Because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat. He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet. Our God is marching on. Glory Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah! His truth is marching on!"
The world does change. The world is changing.
Slowly – yes. Too slowly – yes. But one mili-step at a time the world does change.
How do I know?
I know because I – Adrienne Brewington; maiden name: Martin; daughter of Chris and Frank, granddaughter of Harriet, Henry, Daniel and Irene. Great granddaughter of Priscilla, who was born a slave when General Sherman was burning the South -- I have been to college, and to law school and to seminary.
I am taking the first tentative steps of living a great man’s dream.
When I received the invitation to address you today, I thought I I would speak of the ways in which the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has affected my life. As I pondered the question, I found that, at first blush, it is a difficult question to which to respond meaningfully.
You see, I was only ten years old when Dr. King died.
I remember the day very well. I was sitting on my bed, watching television and playing with my dolls, when a news broadcast broke into the regular programming. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot to death on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, TN.
Four years later, I entered High School. Four years after that, I entered the college of my choice – Fordham University College at Lincoln Center. Some years after that, I went to the Law School of my choice -- Rutgers University School of Law in Newark, NJ. Three years later, I began the job of my choice as an Assistant District Attorney in Bronx County. I enjoyed a 13-year career as an attorney before leaving the practice of law to assume my first full time pastorate. I was that church’s first non-white pastor. I was their first woman pastor.
You see...?
I have lived an ordinary life full of the things that any person ought to be able to expect to enjoy. How do I even know whether the work of Martin Luther King has affected my life – let alone how?
I have some memories to guide me in answering that question...
For example, I remember 1963.
That was the year that Medgar Evers was shot to death in Mississippi. It is the year that Dr. King wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It is the year that Dr. King led the march on Washington and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. It is the year that a bomb killed four little girls like me at a Birmingham church.
I was a five-year-old kindergartner that year, the year when president John Kennedy was assassinated. My father, a federal employee, was released from work once the news spread, and he came to school to get me.
I remember that he walked to the school from our house, even though we had two cars. And I remember standing at a particular corner waiting for the traffic light to change and listening to my Dad try to explain to me in words I could understand that the president was dead and why it was that people sometimes did such stupid things as kill each other.
And I remember the day of the funeral I walked into the back room of our house – the room where my mother always did her ironing. The ironing board was up. A wicker laundry basket stood next to it. But my mother wasn’t ironing. She sitting on the sofa watching the president’s funeral, tears on her face. And when I spoke to her, she asked me very quietly to please go away and leave mommy alone for a little while...
Six months later, three civil rights workers went missing. Two months after that, they were found murdered. That same year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, and Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ask me what effect Dr. King’s work has had on my life....
I remember a childhood friend whose father grew all kinds of fruit and vegetable trees and bushes and vines in their back yard. On a summer afternoon we would go back there and eat green apples and unripened grapes and string beans and blueberries and gooseberries until we were sick.
And I remember putting on a production of “The Princess and the Pea” in somebody’s garage.
I remember a neighbor who always had the best fireworks on the 4th of July.
I remember fireflies at the end of summer, and learning how to swim, and going to the book-mobile every Wednesday afternoon of a summer to take out a new book, and block parties and eating home-made ice cream that tasted like heaven after churning it for what seemed like forever. And I remember the Williams boys, who were much bigger than I, who always took over the churning after smaller arms gave out.
A perfectly ordinary life, lived in perfectly ordinary Lakeview, Long Island, while all around me the world was churning up. The world was changing. My horizons were expanding. And I don’t remember that, because I didn’t know...
I remember the things my parents taught me:
That my time has value. That practice makes perfect. That you do your home-work before you turn on the T.V. That the only proper way to wash a floor is on your hands and knees. I learned these and other life lessons well...
And so I remember very well the day I was sitting at our kitchen table while my mother combed my hair, and hearing her voice say behind me that it was probably better if I didn’t play with a particular child I knew, because his people weren’t quite our kind of people...
I know that each lesson was lovingly taught, in an effort to enrich me and improve my life.
Other people taught their children similar lessons. I know this because I had friends at school with whom I did not socialize after the 3:00 bell. The father of one girlfriend in particular would not have me in his home. The mother of another friend refused to allow me into her house to see her daughter because she had other company. I remember she came out of her house and pulled her front door behind her and stood on her front step as she told me to run along home.
Where did this woman acquire such an attitude? From her mother, my friend’s grandmother. I know this because on another occasion the grandmother had told me to leave the house and not to come back.
I remember these things. And I have other memories, as well...
One of my earliest memories is of walking a picket line with my parents. That was the same year that Malcolm X was murdered, and Dr. King led the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march.
And then there was this one particular day...
In the next town over from where I grew up there was once a Department Store called Abraham and Strauss. When I was a girl, before the mall was such a popular place to be, A&S – which is what everybody called it – was such a big, thriving place that folks came from all over Long Island and parts of Queens to shop there.
One day when I was about 6 years old, my mother took my younger brother and me to A&S. She needed to shop for drapes for our living room.
The drapery department at A&S was enormous. And it had rows and rows of sample draperies that hung from the ceiling all the way to the floor. While my mother shopped, my brother and I ran up and down the rows of drapes playing hide-and-go-seek.
That night, my mom bathed me and put me to bed as usual. She listened to my prayers, and tucked me in and turned out the light. But instead of leaving the room, she sat down on the side of the bed. And I will never forget the words she spoke to me.
She said, “I know you will not understand this, but there are people in this world who will think that you are not as good as them. They will think it because you are a Negro. What they think about you is not true. You are as good as anybody. But you will have to try very hard to be a very good girl so that you don’t give anyone a reason to think you are not as good as them.
Ask me what significance Dr. King has had in my life...
I attended elementary school in Malverne, NY. I was sent to a particular school as a consequence of court-ordered integration. The school I attended was, at that time, named after a former Grand Cyclops of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Clan. The first day of school in that new place, my mother went to work late, because she followed the school bus in her car and waited until I was safely inside the school building before going on her way.
I remember getting off of the bus that morning. A lot of noise – yelling. I remember especially walking between two rows of black boots belonging to the men who were there to protect us.
That was, I believe, the same year that Dr. King was pelted with rocks and stones as he led a march for open housing in Chicago.
The events that form these memories are the indicia of the world that Dr. King was working to change. But if you ask me in what ways Dr. King has most influenced my life, my answer will probably be this: I have had the privilege of living a perfectly ordinary life...
Yet, James Weldon Johnson has, quite prophetically, put my ordinary life in perspective for me:
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
Do you see? ...
I might like to deceive myself that my life has been ordinary. But, my memories, when I engage them, overrun my self-deception. My life has not been ordinary at all. It has been a life marked by incidents of violence and bigotry.
And the rest of the truth is that my perception that my life has been ordinary is only possible because Dr. King’s work helped create a world in which I could have an ordinary life.
The sacrifice was great. The sacrifice was great because Dr. King – and those who were truly his followers – committed themselves to a course of nonviolent social action. This commitment made them the object of scorn and ridicule and violence from every corner – even from other African Americans who believed that violence was the only way to overthrow the corrupt social systems that supported this country’s system of racist apartheid.
Dr. King said, just a few weeks before he was assassinated, “I plan to stand by nonviolence because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, with my own self.”
These are the principals to which Dr. King committed himself:
That: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding. Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.
That: Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform. Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate. Nonviolence believes that the Universe is on the side of justice.
That nonviolence is active, resistance to evil. That nonviolence is aggressive spiritually, mentally and emotionally. That nonviolence is always persuading the opponent of the righteousness of your cause. That nonviolence is only passive in its non-aggression toward the enemy. That nonviolence accepts suffering, if necessary, but will never inflict it. Nonviolence accepts suffering without retaliation. Nonviolence willingly accepts the consequences of its act.
That unearned suffering is redemptive, and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. That suffering has the power to convert the enemy when reason fails.
That: Nonviolence resists violence of the spirit as well as of the body. Nonviolent love is spontaneous, unmotivated, unselfish and creative. Nonviolent love gives willingly, knowing that the return might be hostility. Nonviolent love is active, not passive. Nonviolent love is unending in its ability to forgive in order to restore community. Nonviolent love does not sink to the level of the hater.
That: Love for the enemy is how we demonstrate love for ourselves. Love restores community and resists injustice. Nonviolence recognizes the fact that all life is interrelated. The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win. Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice.
These are the radical ideas and practices that have won me my “ordinary life.”
Dr. King taught us that nonviolence first transforms the person who embraces it. That nonviolence is radical in the deepest sense of the word because it changes the spirit behind attitudes. Once the spirit of nonviolence is internalized, goals like domination, conquest or retaliation no longer drive behavior. When this happens the stage is set for a dramatic transformation of relationships.
And the world does change.
In the words of Dr. King...
"Like an idea whose time has come. Not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom. I know you are asking today how long will this take? Somebody is asking how long will prejudice blind the visions of men? I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long.
"Because truth crushed to Earth will rise again. How long? Not long.
"Because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long.
"Because you shall reap what you sow. How long? Not long.
"Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future, behindeth them unknown standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own.
"How long? Not long. Because the arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
"How long? Not long. Because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on. He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat. He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. Oh, be swift my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet. Our God is marching on. Glory Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah! His truth is marching on!"
The world does change. The world is changing.
Slowly – yes. Too slowly – yes. But one mili-step at a time the world does change.
How do I know?
I know because I – Adrienne Brewington; maiden name: Martin; daughter of Chris and Frank, granddaughter of Harriet, Henry, Daniel and Irene. Great granddaughter of Priscilla, who was born a slave when General Sherman was burning the South -- I have been to college, and to law school and to seminary.
I am taking the first tentative steps of living a great man’s dream.
