Monday, January 19, 2009

MLK



I covered the Martin Luther King Jr. prayer breakfast up here in Manhattan for the university paper and had a cool experience. The speaker was Dr. Al Brinson, a man who grew up in the King family and was a lifelong friend of King. He shared stories about his own personal struggles in the civil rights movement.


Brinson shared a story of an intimate moment with Dr. King as they drove home from the airport together after King had become nationally known. “I had been going through all these things that I knew deep down inside that one day I was going to enter ministry but I had never acknowledge it to myself or to anybody else.” Brinson was hesitant, unsure of how to bring the topic up in front of King so he just started, “I have some things on my mind and I don’t know how to begin to talk about them.” King looked at him and he said “‘Albert I know what you want to talk about and I’ve known this all along. None of us is ever good enough, if that were the case I’d need to go home now.’” "God always uses people in spite of them, not because of them."

I thought that was some cool words from a major figure of history.

He said people were pointing to them the whole drive and he could read their lips: "That's Martin Luther King!"

1 comment:

rachel rianne said...

That's really sweet.
Was that in the paper today?
I'll have to read it.