'Hi, I’m Mike King and, sorry, I have a cold'

January 13, 9:50 AMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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As a student and teacher of the mind of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  one becomes sentimental every January—the month of his birth and an annual, mercantile-free (so far) interval of reflection and social service seminars.  Martin would have turned 80 this Thursday.  But not only that:  Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January 19, falls 24 hours prior to the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.  The Obama family has linked the two days with a “Renew America Day” of volunteerism and good works.

I have a lifelong obsession with finding people who actually interacted with the man born as “Mike” on January 15, 1929.  There was Dr. Joan Campbell, the one-time General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, who related a story to me about M.L. King while we both appeared on a Cleveland podium for an MLK Day Convocation several years ago.

How I would have liked to have given Mike King something warm to eat, and to just chat with him about the rain, children, life itself! 

“We were expecting him one afternoon for a dedication ceremony of some kind.  This was in the mid-sixties.  My doorbell rang at home.  Outside in the rain stood a rather small young man, alone in a raincoat.  He said, ‘Hi, I’m Mike King.’  He apologized profusely because he had a cold.  He needed some attention and I warmed him up with some soup and some cough medicine.  He was just so humble.”

This scene, having taken place in a Shaker Heights, Ohio home—in the same community where my two daughters grew up—has never left me.  The humanity of it, and the tenderness of it, makes me swell up with curiosity and envy.  How I would have liked to have given Mike King something warm to eat, and to just chat with him about the rain, children, life itself!  This recollection of Dr. Campbell:  How it stands in juxtaposition to the untold times that Dr. King was subjected to blows, insults, expulsions, and the cold soup of prison.

My longtime friend, Congressman Louis Stokes, one-time chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus as well as the House Investigation Committee on Assassinations, remembers a telling moment with Martin Luther King.  Louis’ brother, Carl, was elected mayor of Cleveland in November, 1967—Carl was the first African-American to ever be elected mayor of a major American city.  (Ironically, I was a co-officiant at Carl Stokes’ funeral in 1996; Jesse Jackson spoke the eulogy).

Dr. King was in Cleveland for the tight balloting and shared an upstairs conference room with the Stokes brothers in a downtown building on election night.  (Carl is the one seated in the photo.) When word came that Carl had narrowly won the mayoralty, he had to go downstairs to meet the press and accept the results.  According to Louis Stokes, Carl invited Dr. King to join him at the podium.  King politely declined, saying:  “If I go down there with you, people will be looking at me and this should be all about you.”  Brother Louis was not comfortable just leaving MLK by himself so he spent a long interval chatting privately with King in the room while Carl went down to accept the historic election outcome.

The Talmud says: ‘He who does not exalt himself will be exalted by Heaven.”

(First in a series celebrating the life of M.L. King)

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