My husband's Seasonal gift this year proved the Rolling Stones wrong. Bill gave us inestimable satisfaction. How? By giving away a mite of land.
This small bit of land is two burial plots adjacent to his parents' final resting place. It's just up the hill from the graves of arch-segregationist Alabama Governors George and Lurline Wallace in Montgomery. Bill gave them to the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.
Bill was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in Montgomery when both were iconic symbols to the world of American injustice. He rode to school on city buses where twice a day, the driver folded back the "Colored" signs pointing to the back of the bus, since only white children were on board, going to and from segregated schools.
He was 8 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began what would be his historic ministry at Dexter Avenue Baptist in Bill's hometown. It was the same year that the U.S. Supreme Court pointed America toward what the Southern Education Foundation calls The Right Side of History with "Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas". This was 1954, the year before the Montgomery Bus Boycott which launched a major phase in the centuries long struggle for full Civil Rights for all Americans.
We are confident that however the renamed Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church puts this bit of real estate to work, it will further a monumental legacy. Like the pursuit of justice itself, this is a satisfaction that will know no end. We are grateful that the Church accepted our gift.
Bill and I view the American Civil Rights struggle as a lasting legacy and an ongoing lesson in the rights and responsibilities of people who would govern themselves. We've produce many programs on this subject which you can find on the Paula Gordon website.
In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King quoted from Amos in the Hebrew Bible: "Let justice roll down like waters ...." That is our wish to you in this season and in our shared future. Justice. Giving. Satisfaction.