Remembering Hazel: Remarks on Martin Luther King Day

• Remembering Hazel: Remarks on Martin Luther King Day

Hazel Plant understood that dreams and causes are like children: we don’t abandon them when they are challenging. We don’t abandon them when they protest. And we don’t abandon them when they’re down, or needy, or even when they’re broken into pieces. Because this is when our causes need us most and, in their need, exhibit vulnerability. And when what we care about exhibits vulnerability, this is when we are most strongly called upon to exhibit character. Hazel Plant had character.

One of her causes, one she shared with her husband, Al, her predecessor as state representative, was to ensure that this community showed proper reverence for Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1984, after a nine-year battle, Al Plant had a unique legislative triumph: the passage of a bill making Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a state holiday. As the Founder and President of the Organization of Minority Women, Hazel’s goal was to keep King’s legacy alive. And she did.

A belief in a system of civil rights, like a belief in a system of public service, is directly related to a belief in country. Justice, in this way, shapes Faith. As a community’s—or a nation’s—system of justice evolves, so does its members’ trust in that community. And that trust begets love. When we love our community we are loyal to it, and we will work hard to see that the things we love most are sustainable. Hazel Plant understood this equation: justice to faith to trust to love. Hazel Plant loved her community.

It is fitting to remember her and her work today. Today is a day that shapes American culture, because each year on this day we remember the man whose faith shaped justice: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This is what Dr. King wrote in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” in April of 1963.

And then he wrote this:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

“An inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” King was prescient in this idea; he predicted a world not only in which scientists would prove that a butterfly flapping its wings would cause waves on another continent, but one in which the politics of an Afghan border village shape the soul of an American boy deployed to defend his country. King knew that justice was not something one was given, but rather something for which one had to fight.

Justice shapes faith.

Dr. King, Jr. died fighting. Hazel Plant died fighting, too. We honor her alongside him today for the things that they shared: grace, fearlessness, and dreams. The legacy King left in the civil rights community, the same legacy Hazel Plant worked to build upon, was a reflection of a belief in America. They loved this country. They did not abandon it when it was down. They did not abandon it when it was challenging. This country—and the potential for it to be a better place for all people—was their cause. Shaping civil rights, and so shaping justice, was their way of shaping American culture, and so the way we see ourselves. They gave us faith that change was possible. They lived the idea that “Yes, we can.”

They have left us with work left to do. We honor them by doing it.

* * *

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” Atticus Finch said that—or, Harper Lee wrote that for Finch to say. It’s a great line for anyone involved in politics, local or national, to recall. Someone might try to take away your vote, but no one can take away your conscience. Our conscience gives us faith in a better day. Conscience tells a white Southern lawyer how to behave. Conscience tells a soldier when to shoot. And conscience ties together all the individuals who have left a mark on American life by fighting for what they believe.

Conscience can be as powerful a weapon as any gun in the fight to change what a nation believes. Conscience can shape Justice, and Justice shapes Faith.