Amid the violence and hate, King’s message still speaks to us
Dr. Benjamin Foster was a student at Hartford High School in 1963. On a weekday afternoon, Foster was standing with friends on Main Street near Bellevue Square, where he lived. He noticed three men walking in their direction on the other side of the street. It was unusual to see Black men dressed in suits and ties on a weekday, so Foster paid particular attention.
As the trio approached, Foster recognized the Rev. Martin Luther King, accompanied by the Rev. Richard Battles of Mount Olive Baptist Church and Tom Butler, a local postal worker who had gone to high school with King. They crossed the street and Dr. King ask the teenagers about themselves. One of them was holding a basketball, always a conversation starter.
It did not take long for Dr. King to engage in some evangelizing. They could help him by finishing school and staying out of trouble. Good advice then and now.
A few years ago, I heard Dr. Foster, a civil rights activist in Connecticut, preach about his meeting with Dr. King. It stayed with me, so I called him to hear more.
We honor Dr. King’s message of non-violent resistance to injustice this holiday weekend. It speaks to us from across the decades, especially as we contemplate the damage from hate, anger and violence in America that combine to diminish our nation and democracies around the world, and those who yearn to be freed from their servitude.
Freedom will always face implacable enemies abroad. Jan. 6 provided a stark reminder that its adversaries have found each other here. The domestic enemies of freedom assist the foreign ones. When we competed with the Soviet Union for allies and influence, racial segregation turned much of the developing world against us. The best young minds in Africa, Dr. Foster recalls, had no interest in attending universities in a nation that required them
in many places to sit in the back of a public bus, among other daily indignities. Dr. King’s leadership of the civil rights movement was a beacon to the world.
Dr. King was an inspiration in Connecticut, too. He developed a close relationship with Rev. Battles. Mount Olive was at the center of the civil rights movement here, organizing and sending peaceful demonstrators to Washington, D.C. and Selma, Alabama. Dr. King may have been in Hartford to recruit participants for that summer’s March on Washington. He would have spent some time raising money. The civil rights movement always needed money, posting bail for peaceful demonstrators arrested by Southern police.
In October 1963, Robert Kennedy would authorize the FBI to wiretap Dr. King as he traveled the nation. He also faced challenges within the civil rights movement. Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” movement was attractive to many young Blacks frustrated with King’s devotion to peaceful civil disobedience.
Before Dr. King ended his conversation on Main Street that afternoon in 1963, he repeated to the students, “You can help me by finishing school and staying out of trouble.” Dr. Foster may well have lived by that advice without a memorable intervention from the man he calls “one of America’s prophets.” He went on to earn degrees at institutions including Trinity, Wesleyan and the University of Massachusetts. He devoted his career to education as a teacher, administrator and leader in education.
Dr. Foster has served in a variety of roles in the NAACP. He is especially proud of his role in lobbying the Connecticut legislature to adopt in 2019 the Black and Latino Studies Act. It requires all high schools to provide an elective course, according to Gov. Ned Lamont’s statement when he signed the legislation, “that provides students with a better understanding of the African-American, Black, Puerto Rican and Latino contributions to United States history, society, economy and culture.”
We are living through fraught times. It is impossible to know if we are closer to the beginning or the end of them. We also live in a remarkable age. Dr. King, who was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, would be delighted — and maybe astonished — at the life of achievement and service the young Benjamin Foster would create in the 58 years that followed their brief encounter.
The global pandemic will preclude the usual gatherings this holiday weekend to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy.
I asked Dr. Foster what book he would recommend. His quick reply: Dr. King’s “Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos?” He wrote it in 1967. Now, like then, we are once more grasping for an answer.