In the Name of Love

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Early morning, April 4th.  Shots ring out in the Memphis sky.  Free at last, they took your life, but they could not take your pride.  MLK day.  Some folks just see this as another day off.  But this day is so much more. Today marks the 50th anniversary celebrating one of the rarest people on the planet. Martin Luther King belongs up there with Mother Theresa, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela.  While I was just a wee 3 years old when he was tragically killed, he and his freedom riders made a huge impact on my life later when I studied it in school.  Since then I have been fascinated with civil rights, equal rights.  Treating people differently because of the color of their skin, their religion, their gender is WRONG.

In 2016, civil rights leader and freedom rider John Lewis came to the Weather Channel to speak on climate change.  He is the representative for the 5th congressional district in Georgia - a district I live in and vote for.  Whether or not you are a democrat or republican, you cannot deny this man's legacy.  Anyone who rips on him - I dare you to sit in silent protest for equal rights at a lunch counter when white men were beating you to a pulp.  While he was at the Weather Channel, we should have been asking him about what Congress and the US government were going to do about climate change in relation to increasingly deadly hurricanes, global warming affecting the rise of the ocean.  But I raised my hand first to ask about what it took to have the fortitude and courage to be a freedom rider, and how we combat racial unrest that still exists today.  He told me (and the room) about one of the white men that beat him that day back in 1968.  Forty years later, John Lewis received a visitor to his office at the capital in DC. Though John Lewis did not recognize the man's name he accepted his visit.  This man brought his 40 year old son with him to the visit.  He asked John Lewis if he recognized him, and Rep. Lewis said "No."  The man then admitted he was one of the men that had beaten John Lewis to near death that day back in the 60's. John Lewis did not flinch.  The man burst into tears, and asked if he would accept his apology.  Most people would have this man (and his son) escorted out immediately.  John Lewis did not - he accepted the man's apology that day, because John Lewis knew that he had come to repent in front of his son, who no doubt probably could not believe his father did this to Rep. Lewis.  Even more amazing, THEY EMBRACED and cried together.  John Lewis went on to explain that the only way to combat this hatred, elitism and discrimination is by unconditional love and forgiveness.  FORGIVENESS.  By the end of this story, I had tears rolling down my cheeks in front of my entire company.  Many others did too.  I will never forget this story, and I will never forget meeting a living legend that I respect greatly as a person.

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