Say It Plain by Catherine Ellis

Author:Catherine Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2011-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

[IN MEMPHIS, THE] Mason temple had a tin roof and as I heard the rain pattering tonight on this beautiful place, in this beautiful place, and looked out and saw the flash of the lightning, I was somehow strangely transported back almost ten years. And I remember when Turner and I walked into that Mason temple that night, it was rather late. This is one of those nights when we didn’t expect anybody to be present, that place seats perhaps 7,500 or 8,000 people and to our surprise there must have been between 1,500 and 2,000 folk who had turned out on that very, very stormy night.

And Dr. Abernathy presented Martin that night, and Dr. Abernathy can speak quite a long time but that night he spoke even longer than usual. I remember it took him almost 45 minutes to introduce Dr. King. Brought him from 1929, [when] he was born, up until 1968 so that it was providential for me because when I got there, Dr. King had not yet gotten up to speak.

I had worked with Dr. King, I was a member of the Board of Directors of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; later I was to serve as financial secretary of that organization. I had marched and demonstrated and walked with Dr. King and had been one of his legal counselors and advisors for almost all of his civil rights career. But in all of those years that I heard Dr. King speak, never had I heard him speak with the pathos and the passion and the eloquence which he demonstrated that night. I was literally transfixed in my seat as this prophet of God spoke not only to Memphis, but to the nation and indeed to the world.

I wish I could stand here tonight and say that I had some premonition that that would be his last speech, but I did not. But I shall not forget how, at the conclusion of that speech, Dr. King, who was sort of stoic by nature, I never, in the years that I knew him, saw him exhibit too much joy or sorrow over anything much, he simply took life as it was. He was criticized and abused and vilified, misunderstood and lied on continuously. Would the God that all the folk who follow him now, both black and white, had followed him during his lifetime, we would be closer to the realization of the great American dream.

I remember that night when he finished, he stopped by quoting the words of that song that he loved so well, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” He never finished. He wheeled around and took his seat and to my surprise, when I got a little closer, I saw tears streaming down his face. Grown men were sitting there weeping openly because of the power of this man who spoke on that night.

It’s sort of fitting that ten years later I’m here at this great institution as you commemorate the life and the time, the service of one of America’s authentic heroes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.