Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

I decided to write this month on Martin Luther King, Jr., as I will represent Bishop Burbidge this month at the annual Martin Luther King Breakfast. Dr. King and his ministry are known world wide.

In the days of the Civil Rights movement I was a young priest and the Pastor in New Bern. One day Bishop Vincent Waters called me and told me to do whatever I could to foster the movement in our Diocese. The restriction he placed on this was wise: I was not to demonstrate.

This placed me in the position to be a mediator and to foster dialogue between the races. When Black youths were arrested for demonstrating and the jail was full, I was asked to talk to the sheriff and get the young people released. I was active in the Civil Rights Committee of the City of Raleigh. We used every method we could think of to promote Civil Rights and to preach non-violence.

This non-violent approach, which Dr. King promoted, was the key to the strength of the movement. Peaceful marches and demonstrations and “sit-ins” at eating places were the tools used in those tense times. The movement for equality spread across the nation, and Catholic Religious women were very prominent in the marches of the era. This approach by Martin Luther King eventually paid off in the civil rights laws passed by Congress.

Bishop Waters, a Virginian, was one of the pioneers in ending separate churches in the South. As a Catholic priest and Bishop he knew segregation was wrong, and ended it in his Diocese.

The banquet on January 18th, when I will represent the Diocese, is organized by Mr. Bruce Lightner. He belongs to a family that has always been active in human rights. His grandfather ran for civic office in Raleigh, unsuccessfully. But in the ‘70s his son, Bruce’s father, became the first and only Black Mayor of Raleigh. Clarence Everett Lightner (1921–2002) was in fact the first African American elected mayor of a large Southern city. His election gained national attention since only 16% of registered voters in Raleigh were Black, and it was unique for a white-majority city to elect a Black candidate for mayor. Even more surprising to some was the fact that his race was rarely mentioned in the campaign.

Msgr. Thomas P. Hadden