I came from Terre Haute Indiana which is highly segregated but my mother was always affiliated with the NAACP I was very familiar with the cause of racial Justice and all of my life I've lived under segregation even though I've been in the North in 1958 I came to Detroit Detroit where I became the senior minister of Plymouth United Church of Christ there wasn't much social Act of civil rights activity uh when I got to town by any of the churches including my own our civil rights activity was bor
n out of necessity we had come through a period of rioting uh where blacks just got tired of being pushed around and mistreated by the police the police would come in and push the blacks around any way they wanted to and one Saturday night the police came in to one of the night spots and began pushing people around and the people began to fight back the people had just exploded the oppression had been so bad it had just boiled over now Dr King was a Baptist and that's how I became associated wit
h them in the South because I joined up with the Baptist to fight the segregation and discrimination in the South Dr King was not alien to me although he was still feared by a lot of blacks there was some skepticism of Dr King there was some fear of Dr King he and Johnson President Johnson had kind of parted ways because Dr King felt that the war in Vietnam was evil and wrong and we shouldn't be there there was some unrest in the black community about Dr King because Johnson was a Democrat most
of the residents were Democrat and Dr King had the nerve to go against the president of the United States about the morality or the immorality of the war in Vietnam I came to the March just as they were making a turn heading for the staging area and it's very interesting the the front line of the March had all of the dignitaries that Bishops uh black Church White Church the rabbis they had speakers all up and down the mall and in all honesty with me with my great self I was back there with every
body else I was a long way away but I could hear now they didn't have big screens in that day but they did have the sound system set up so that we could hear the speech all the dignitaries were up on the platform and they'd made all these great speeches the Urban League the NAACP they'd all given it their best shot but but when Dr King got up there that just that just topped everything he spoke directly to the issues to the people and the crowd was just mesmerized by his speech King did the righ
t thing even though they use guns against him bombs bullets all kind of things but he won you know they let him tie they let him lie in jail and they took him to the worst jail in in Alabama but he stuck to what was right and he won
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