Benjamin Mays was the child of former slaves,. He was born on an isolated cotton farm near Ninety Six, South Carolina in 1894. His parents were sharecroppers. The darkest years of Jim Crow segregation were just descending on the South; humiliation, mob violence and lynching by whites were common threats for African Americans. Mays learned at an early age the searing lessons of racial inferiority. He had a vivid memory of being stopped with his father by a group of armed, white men on horseback. “I remember starting to cry,” Mays wrote. “They cursed my father, drew their guns and made him salute, made him take off his hat and bow down to them several times. Then they rode away. I was not yet five years old, but I have never forgotten them.”2 (American RadioWorks: A Century of Great African American Speeches)
In 1940 following a fascinating journey from this inauspicious beginning Mays became the President of Morehouse College, a respected black school for men in Atlanta; Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Morehouse graduate in 1948 and considered Mays to be his “spiritual mentor and intellectual father.” On April 9, 1968 five days following the assassination of King, Mays delivered his eulogy in an open-air memorial service on the Morehouse campus where a crowd estimated at over 150,000 people attended.
As we celebrate the actual birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929) with a federal holiday in the United States in 2024, the words of the Mays eulogy still speak plain and loud.
“God called the grandson of a slave on his father’s side, and the grandson of a man born during the Civil War on his mother’s side, and said to him, ‘Martin Luther, speak to America about war and peace. Speak to America about social justice and racial discrimination. Speak to America about its obligation to the war. And speak to America about nonviolence.‘
Let it be thoroughly understood that our deceased brother did not embrace nonviolence out of fear or cowardice. Moral courage was one of his noblest virtues. As Mahatma Gandhi challenged the British Empire without a sword and won, Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the interracial injustice of his country without a gun. And he had faith to believe that he would win the battle for social justice. I make bold to assert that it took more courage for Martin Luther to practice nonviolence than it took his assassin to fire the fatal shot. The assassin is a coward. He committed his dastardly deed and fled. When Martin Luther disobeyed an unjust law, he accepted the consequences of his actions. He never ran away and he never begged for mercy. He returned to the Birmingham jail to serve his time...
Morehouse will never be the same, because Martin Luther came by here. And the nation and the world will be indebted to him for centuries to come…
I close by saying to you what Martin Luther King Jr. believed. If physical death was the price he had to pay to rid America of prejudice and injustice, nothing could be more redemptive. And, to paraphrase the words of the immortal John Fitzgerald Kennedy, permit me to say that Martin Luther King Jr.’s unfinished work on earth must truly be our own.”
Say it plain; say it loud. America remains indebted to Martin Luther King, Jr. on what would have been his 95th. birthday in a new century, and his unfinished work on earth must truly be our own. We have much to do.
Onward.
I'll Call It Like I See It 