New York Times

Martin Luther King Jr.’s friend talks about Martin

"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation," said Martin Luther King Jr. on August 28, 1963 during one of the most famous speeches in America’s history. I was there when my best friend Martin gave that speech and from that point on, I believed in a land where segregation does not exist and where blacks are equal to whites. I believed in Martin's dream.

It all started when we were kids growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. We went to a segregated school and one day two of our best friends who were white suddenly stopped playing baseball with us. This troubled Martin very much. He didn't understand why we could not all play together. After high school, Martin attended Morehouse College in Atlanta where he met his wife, Coretta Scott. Hw received a B.A. degree in 1948. After college, he became a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama. At this time, he was one of the members of a famous organization called the NAACP (National Association for the Advanced Colored People), which helped colored people in need.

He then was put in charge of what is now called the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott lasted 382 days until the Supreme Court said that it was not constitutional to segregate blacks on public buses. They said that they should be equal. I remember those days. They were tough on Martin. He was arrested. His house was bombed and he was personally abused. One thing that was good about the boycott was that we as people were moving to end segregation, which was the goal.

Martin had now become a Civil Rights leader whether he wanted to or not. People respected him for his speeches, his mind, and his heart. He then was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference because the group wanted new leadership for Civil Rights. For the next eleven years, I did not see Martin very much until that day the day of his "I Have a Dream" speech. One thing you may not know is he wrote one of America’s most famous speeches while in jail. He wrote it from the heart so when he told me to come to the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, I ran out of the door as fast as I could. I did that because I knew something special was going to happen. I couldn't wait to see my friend and to talk to him.

So there I was at the Lincoln Memorial next to Martin as he gave the "I Have a Dream" speech. The way he presented it was astonishing; in my opinion it was the best speech of our century. I was tearing up when I heard it; it was the most moving thing I had ever heard. I was amazed and so very proud of my friend. I talked to him after he spoke to the 250,000 people gathered to hear the speech and just talked and talked. It was unbelievable because the man that just gave this great speech was sitting next to me as calm as he could be. I wondered why he wasn't bragging and telling me why he did this and why he did that, but now I understand it he didn't do it for himself, or me. He did it for all people.

Later that year, he was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year. He then went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was the youngest person ever to win that award and the second African-American. He gave away his prize money to help the Civil Rights cause. He also helped bring about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed by President Lyndon Johnson. I remember watching when the President signed the act. The first thing he did was stand up and shake Martin's hand.

Then there was Memphis, Tennessee where Martin gave his speech, "The Promised Land", the day before he was assassinated. This is what he said:

When he said, "I have seen the promise land." I now think about it and right now I beleive Martin is in the promise land looking over all of us and waiting for us to get there.

The next day he was assassinated on his balcony hotel in Memphis by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. My friend had been shot. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested 14 times for his cause, and for us. For the next couple days, I sat at home and thought about all the good times I had with Martin and all the things we had done together, and all the things we'd seen, but the one thing I thought of the most is how he changed history and how he was one of the greatest, most caring, and most loving people in the history of this country. He was not just a leader to me, or you, or this country. He was a leader to the world.