We just completed the annual MLK walk here in Dayton OH and just about to have a lunch where we will discuss the meaning of what we just did.
The picture the the left is from the walk I took 4 years ago over the Pettus Bridge on the 50th anniversary where 600 PEACEFUL protesters trying to cross a bridge (named after a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan) were attacked by the “Law” without cause.
This bridge is the site where the peaceful protesters were brutally beaten by Sheriff Jim Clark’s officers who attacked the protestors with billy clubs. The images and savagery of this event so shocked the nation it lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (the year of Dakota Center’s founding). It is appropriate today to revisit Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail...where Dr. King pens, ”
“YOU express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”
The picture on the right is from us just crossing the 3rd St. Bridge. As we look out from under the I-75 overpass, we come into the light of downtown. It is my prayer the just light and righteous dream of Dr. King shines in all our hearts where we judge others not by “the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” That is what we stand for each day at Dakota Center where “Building Character and Connecting Community” guides all we do.
