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NMH Magazine : Spring 2006

Parting Words

Sharing the Dream with Dr. King by Ralph Lord Roy ’46

In May 1961 I was serving as pastor of a Manhattan church when the office phone rang. An all-clergy Freedom Ride was being planned—would I go?

Freedom Rides were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality; their objective was to make sure segregation was no longer enforced on interstate travel, in keeping with new federal regulations. Opposition to these regulations was fierce: two integrated buses had recently been attacked and burned in Alabama, with many passengers injured.

We met in Washington to be trained in nonviolence, then divided into integrated teams and were assigned to test waiting rooms, restaurants, and restrooms. At first we occasioned only a few hostile stares. As we moved farther south, we met increasing resistance. In Sumter, South Carolina, for example, a furious crowd met us with sticks and stones (and hidden guns, we were warned).

At the end of our journey, we assembled at the Tallahassee airport to catch our flights back north. Our group walked past the airport restaurant, which was serving breakfast. Outside this large eatery was a lonely counter with the sign “Colored” on it. We started toward the restaurant, but the door was immediately locked and we were advised that the restaurant was closed for a “special cleaning”—obviously a fable. Ten of the 18 of us decided to wait. Twenty-four hours later, as we still waited for the restaurant to be cleaned, the police descended, arresting and imprisoning us.

A year later I had the privilege of working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He’d been jailed in Albany, Georgia, in the summer of 1962, and I was among those picketing the White House to protest his arrest. Asked whether any picketers could attend Dr. King’s trial in Albany, Rabbi Israel Dresner (my former cellmate in Tallahassee) and I volunteered.

Arriving at the Albany jail, we were confronted by three cells: two full of African American youths, mostly Albany State College students, and Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy, his chief lieutenant, in the center cell. The students belted out one of the songs that helped power the movement, “O, Freedom!” We were inspired by the thunderous singing, but how could we talk with Dr. King? He signaled to me to place my ear at the bars. “They’re singing,” he explained, “so the guards over there won’t hear.” We conversed ear to mouth, mouth to ear.

While I’d met Dr. King several times in New York, Albany provided an opportunity to become well acquainted. I discovered his keen sense of humor and hearty laugh. He was ready to talk theology and inquired earnestly about our families, our challenges, our hopes. Meanwhile, Rabbi Dresner and I tasted bitter samples of apartheid. We were denied admission, as a mixed group, to the public library, parks, restaurants, taxis, and various churches. We spoke at voter-registration meetings in two outlying churches, both soon after burned to the ground. Following one of these meetings, a car full of gun-toting, tailgating vigilantes chased us “out of the county” along a dark dirt road.

Upon returning to New York, Dr. King sent me a telegram asking that we organize a prayer pilgrimage. Seventy-five responded, mostly ministers and rabbis, and we assembled in front of Albany’s city hall to read from the scriptures and pray. Within minutes we were arrested and carted away to area jails—the largest incarceration of clergy in American history.

A year later I was privileged to be in Washington to hear the historic “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1968, I was among the thousands who walked mournfully behind Dr. King’s coffin along the streets of Atlanta. A man of enormous courage and vision, he lives on in my memory, and I am deeply grateful for the honor of knowing him.

Ralph Lord Roy ’46 is a retired United Methodist minister. He writes for newspapers and magazines, and his meditations are aired on several radio stations. Roy lives in Southington, Connecticut, and can be reached at Ralphlroy@aol.com.