The first was when I was in high school.
The second when I returned to the same school as a teacher.
I believe I wrote a third one when I was invited to return to my high school alma mater to give a speech for alumni, but I can't prove that. I know I was invited to speak to alumni, but I can't remember if I wrote a third letter to Dr King or only referred to the first two.
In any case, I wrote another letter to the good doctor today. From my office at church.
Dear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,
My name is Gail. You probably don’t recall, but I wrote to you many years ago when I was a high school student in Brooklyn, NY.
I told you some of my story, about how I ended up graduating from that predominantly white private school. I shared with you the ways in which your dream, the dream that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers,” had come true in my own life and in the life of that school. After being there for six years, from seventh grade until twelfth grade, I was the first black girl to graduate from that school.
A few years have passed since then, Dr. King. Today I write to you from the offices of Caldwell Presbyterian Church, a congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, that sits just outside of center city. As you recall, back in 1960, black college students, joined by others in the community, staged sit-ins at various stores and restaurants here to protest against racial segregation. Stores were soon integrated, as were schools and other establishments. In fact, it was a member of this church, a restaurateur, who proposed how Charlotte would integrate its restaurants, though, admittedly, his interests were as much commercial as they were civic.
I wish I could tell you that Charlotte has only progressed from there. But the truth is that there is deep division in our city and our nation. Our school system is in need of restructuring. The fault lines around race, socio-economic status, and immigration are deep here. There are acts of injustice and violence almost daily here and across this country.
But, as I said, I write to you today from Caldwell, a community of faith that works every day to bring life to your dream. We walk together, work together, and worship together as people of many colors, many nations, many languages, many gender expressions and many religious backgrounds. We long to open our doors even wider to welcome all of the people of God – because all people are God’s people.
We laugh together. We cry together. We sing together. We fight for others, together, too. We walk in unity most of the time, and we have had times of strong disagreement. But we keep coming back. We come back together to forgive one another and start again. We come back together to pray and worship, to serve and love one another. I thank God for these folks and for bringing us together here.
Back when I was in high school, Dr. King, your dream of true community opened my eyes and my heart to the work of faith, love, racial justice, and equality. That dream is alive and well here at Caldwell. Let me rephrase that – the dream that our Triune God laid on your heart back in the 1950s and 1960s is alive and well here at Caldwell. In fact, God’s dream of freedom, peace, love, and community for all people everywhere existed before the foundation of the world. It is my honor, my privilege, and my joy to be here with these beautiful children of God, working, praying, marching, serving, and dreaming our own dreams of beloved community.
Thank you for the life you lived, the work you did, the example you set, and the hope you planted when you were here among us. Thank you for the words that you left us to read and ponder. Thank you for the work you left us to do. May we continue to honor your legacy here and live into your dream at Caldwell. More than that, may we continue to honor and serve the One in whose name you lived and for whose sake you died, Jesus, our Crucified and Risen Lord.
Your sister in Christ, Gail Henderson-Belsito
