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Martin Luther King Jr.?s Attorney and ME! |
| I had something extraordinary happen today, and again, I feel grateful to be at Stanford for these opportunities.I went to Modern African American Struggles class today, about 15 minutes early.When I went in, there was my teacher and a man talking- my teacher said "oh, there's our resident lawyer" --> or, me. I laughed.The man my teacher was talking to started talking to me about law school stuff- what classes I'm taking, the books I'm reading.My teacher went to take a call and I ended up talking to this guy for a long time.Slowly, it starts to dawn on me that I'm talking to Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal attorney.?He was the guy who came to class, a visiting scholar, to lecture on King.He told me about his experiences with Martin.It was INCREDIBLE.His friendship, his experiences etc. He was there in the Birmingham Jail when King wrote his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail".Not only that, he told me about Martin writing his letter on pieces of scrap paper, in a fury, telling him to go find him paper!So Clarence runs around trying to find paper and finds it- and the Birmingham jail letter is written on it!Not only that, this guy wrote the first 7 paragraphs of the "I have a Dream speech".He told me about standing behind Martin as he was giving the speech, and when Martin turned the written sheet over, to a blank page, Clarence realized that "the crowd didnt' know it yet, but they were about to go to church".Apparently he started speaking as he does in sermon- from his heart.That is where all of the "I have a Dream that one day..." came from.?It was probably the coolest conversation I've EVER HAD.He spoke about the responsibility of black professionals to give part of their time to the ongoing freedom movement, which has went from slavery, to voting, to desegregation, to now, inequality of educational experiences.I can't believe it!I am so inspired!I've recently joined the NAACP and the National Lawyer's Guild- so maybe I'll have some more opportunities to be involved. |
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