"Let Us Be Maladjusted"

ERNIE PIPES' RECOLLECTIONS
OF THE MARCH TO MONTGOMERY

You will recall the background leading up to the march. There was a spirit of change and rebellion in the country by the beginning of the 1960's. Rosa Parks, fed up with racial discrimination's incessant humiliation, had refused to go to the back of the bus in Montgomery in 1955, effectively beginning the Civil Rights Movement. By the 60's young people, black and white, were staging freedom rides and non-violent sit-ins at lunch counters. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had gone to Mississippi as part of a voter registration movement in 1964 - and their bodies had been uncovered in an earthern dam. Television screens over the world were showing pictures of protesting black people being attacked by police dogs and streams of fire hoses and brutalized by police. Churches of black congregations had been bombed and Sunday School children killed in Birmingham, Alabama.

A civil rights movement was gaining power and visibility in all parts of the country and a number of militant groups were active: The Black Panthers, the Black Muslims, the Students Non-violent Coordinating Committee, CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality - to a few of the more prominent. But standing out above them all was The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, built on the Gandhian principles of non-violent direct action and civil disobedience - and led by a Baptist minister with the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., gifted with unbending moral courage and unparalleled oratorical power, who was asking white people, asking the nation, to join him in working to overturn centuries of prejudice and injustice.

In March of 1965, when Southern resistance to any form of racial equality had risen to a fever pitch, Dr. King put out a call to clergy everywhere andmembers of their congregations to join him in an interfaith march, from Selma, Alabama, where voter registration efforts had met a wall of virulent racism, to the capital in nearby Montgomery, to bring to national attention the lack of voting rights for blacks. As inthe march on Washington two years earlier, King hoped for a great gathering on the steps of the state capitol,confronting its racist Governor and legislature with the outrage of an indignant citizenry.

Like so many clergy around the country, I based my sermon the following

Sunday on this call - not really intending to go myself but hoping to inspire perhaps a few members of the congregation to heed the call. Well, hardly had the last note of the closing hymn been sung when the congregation gathered itself to send a representative to the march, and quickly decided that it should be their minister. By such events are unintended and reluctant heroes created.

State officials in Alabama permitted only a relatively few, a hundred or so, to march along the narrow road from Selma to Montgomery. But these few would be joined by many thousands, like myself, who would fly to Montgomery. There, in the days preceding the climax of the march, we would do organizational work and recruitment of the local citizens. Thanks to business contacts in Montgomery of amember of our church, I had access to a rented Chevy and, so equipped, my first assignment was to move incoming marchers from the airport to housing - mainly in the black community. My pickups were, naturally, both black and white - and a car with racially mixed passengers on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965 was, to the locals, provocative. There were hostile reactions and we drove only during the day, never at night. Every evening small groups of us would be schooled in the methods of non-violent action in one of the black neighborhoods, usually in a church. During the days we would pass out flyers as a final effort to recruit marchers. We would work in the black neighborhoods for the obvious reasons of safety and where we imagined marchers could be found. But the local blacks, while polite, courteous and grateful for our efforts, would rarely agree to join the march. They were employed, nearly altogether by the white community and, with their livelihoods at jeopardy, there was too much at stake.

The morning of the march, we gathered in a large field outside of town, forming a line many blocks long, with King, Abernathy, Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, and other civil rights leaders at the front. The long march through the city and ultimately down the main streets to the capitol was heavily guarded by police, but this did not prevent hostile jeers from the crowds or objects thrown from buildings into the lines of marchers.

In front of the capitol building there were many speeches, leading at last to that of Dr. King. He spoke in the tradition of the Old Testament Prophets calling for justice to roll down like waters, and he likened the Civil Rights Movement to that mighty stream of righteousness. And he asked: how do we find it; where do we locate it? And in his speech he located that stream in the hearts and minds of WHITE people, privileged people. Other leaders had called for black separatism or black power; King's strategy called for a change of heart - if not in the policeman brandishing the club, then at least in the bystanders watching on TV. Far more than he wanted a voting rights act or freedom to eat at dimestore lunch counters or black elected officials, King wanted the change of heart in individual people, which would make those political developments possible.

This was almost exactly three years to the day before he was shot down inMemphis. He went on from Montgomery to speak out against the Vietnam war, to declare his own war on economic exploitation and poverty and finally, in Memphis, to call for just wages, safe working conditions, and the dignity of working people.

I light the chalice not only in his memory but in dedication to the work he left for us to finish.

READING

The reading this morning comes from "The American Dream," an address Martin Luther King delivered at the Lincoln University commencement in June, 1961. Unlike many of his famous addresses, "The American Dream" is not a sermon, but an exhortation to young people as they face the future.

"It is not enough to struggle for the new society. We must make sure that we make the psychological adjustment required to live in that new society . . .

"In a day when Sputniks and Explorers are dashing through outer space, and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. The choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence. Unless we find some alternative to war, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments. . . .

"Every academic discipline has its technical nomenclature, and modern psychology has a word that is used, probably, more than any other. It is the word "maladjusted." The word is the ringing cry of modern child psychology. Certainly all of us want to live a well-adjusted life in order to avoid the neurotic personality. But I say to you, there are certain things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon all [people] of good will to be maladjusted.

"If you will allow the preacher in me to come out now, let me say to you that I never did intend to adjust to the evils of segregation and discrimination. I never did intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry. I never did intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never did intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. And I call upon all men [and women] of good will to be maladjusted because it may well be that the salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted.

"So let us be maladjusted, as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, 'Let justice run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' Let us be as maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free. Let us be maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could look into the eyes of the men and women of his generation and cry out, 'Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that despitefully use you.'

"I believe that it is through such maladjustment that we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice. That will be the day when all of God's children, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the . . . spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!'"

SERMON

In the popular iconic image of Martin Luther King, Jr., we see a man immersed in the practice of nonviolence and the struggle for freedom, but without any of the internal conflicts that accompany such a demanding vocation. He is confident and clear, never doubtful or confused. He is not anxious about the future. His courage never seems to waver.

But this image doesn't tell us how he got to be like that. Rather it shows us the legacy of a man who spoke the truth and made it sound simple - although of course, no one knew better than he did that it would never be easy. And it preserves his vision.

King gave us a vision of a world in which "all of God's children . . . will be able to join hands." He gave us a vision of a future, when "we will be able to emerge . . . into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice." His vision is persuasive, clear and direct in its moral authority. But that vision is grounded in an experience that is neither simple, nor easy: on the contrary, it is profoundly uncomfortable. To use King's word, it is "maladjusted."

When it came time to plan the message for this morning, King's famous line, "let us be maladjusted," came back to me. It's a phrase that seems to ring with new and relevant truth this year. Perhaps that's because I'm not all that comfortable in our world right now. I wonder what good can come of feeling maladjusted. So I decided to look at what King had to say about it.

King delivered these lines on graduation day at Lincoln University, a historically black college in suburban Pennsylvania. When he says "us" he meant the young African American men and women who were about to enter a world in which they were not very comfortable either. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was still three turbulent years away. They were all participants in a struggle for justice that had not yet been achieved. When King says "let us be maladjusted," he is reassuring his listeners that their feelings are legitimate; he shares them.

It's a revealing glimpse of King, who always seemed to be so confident in himself and so clear about his message. For that confidence and that clarity came from someone who was intensely familiar with the discomfort of living in a world that did not treat him fairly. He wasn't thinking only of himself and other African Americans, however. His sense of community was nothing less than global. In his commencement speech he addresses not only racism and its attendant economic injustices, but also militarism and its use of technology for destruction. In a world gone so wrong, any sane and humane person would have to be maladjusted.

"It may well be," King declares, "that the salvation of our world lies in the hands of the maladjusted." The maladjusted have a vision of justice, like Amos; a vision of freedom, like Abraham Lincoln; and a vision of love, like Jesus. Maladjustment is the beginning of social change. That is how it began in Martin Luther King, Jr., and that is how it begins in all of us.

Listen to how "Martin's big words" are used in the children's story we heard earlier. Where a sign says "whites only," Martin remembers that his mother told him, "You are as good as anyone." When he grows up, he studies the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. "Martin said 'love' when others said 'hate,'" the story goes. "He said 'together,' when others said 'separate.' He said 'peace' when others said 'war.'" When he was told to stop marching, he said "no."

Every step of the way, Martin Luther King refused to do what he was told to do. He may have practiced nonviolence. But he was also oppositional and resistant and not afraid to be the one to say just what people in power did not want to hear.

King's tremendous moral authority came from many sources. It came from his belief in equality and his ability to express the truth in a way that people could hear - sometime for the first time. It came from his willingness to put himself on the line for what was right. It came from his religious faith. And it came from his maladjustment, from his experience of living at odds with the world as it was and from his refusal to accept it as it was. Maladjustment is a creative tension between what is and what should be. It is a righteous irritant and a developmental boost. It puts us in the uncomfortable gap between where we have been and where we are going. And it is the discomfort we feel there, in that gap, that helps us to grow and change.

Martin Luther King knew that maladjustment was a powerful tool. When he exhorted the Lincoln University graduating class, "Let us be maladjusted," he was asking each and every one of them to join a movement for peace and freedom. He was pointing out the excruciating moral dissonance to be found everywhere - in the larger world and in their world, in India and in Alabama. Out of that dissonance would emerge a vision - "the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice."

These days dissonance surrounds us once again. If we are feeling uncomfortable, perhaps that is a good sign. It could be the beginning of a creative process that will yield a new vision and a renewed sense of hope.

Recent expressions of maladjustment suggest some possibilities; here's one: Dante Zappala, a part-time teacher, wrote in the Los Angeles Times this Friday about the death of his brother. He was killed in Iraq last April. Zappala describes how difficult it has been to explain his brother's death to his nine-year-old son. The announcement this week that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq when our military invaded there nearly two years ago "resonates with profound depth" in his family. Zappala writes, "I have moved from frustration to disappointment to anger. And now I have arrived at a place not of understanding but of hope - blind hope that this will change."

It is hard enough to grieve a brother's death. But when that death cannot even be explained - when the dissonance between what we were told and what is true is finally exposed, the pain is nearly unbearable. The only thing to do is to call for justice. "Let us begin to right the wrongs," Dante Zappala concludes.

"Let us be maladjusted," declares Martin Luther King. In those words we hear his pain and his resistance, his discomfort with the world as it is. In those words we also hear the invitation to use that discomfort to bring about profound social change. Maladjustment is the starting point of transformation.

Let us be maladjusted. Let us take our inspiration from our great leader, Martin Luther King, to move from dissonance and pain to justice and hope. He taught us how: now it is we who shall overcome.

References used to prepare this sermon include "The American Dream," 1961, as published in "The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.," edited by James M. Washington (HarperSanFrancisco) and "It's Official: My Brother Died in Vain," by Dante Zappala, published in the "Los Angeles Times," Friday, January 14, 2005.