Reflections on MLK Jr. Day

Greetings from Mumbai. I was running along Marine Drive this morning and reflecting upon Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Each year, I read his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, but this year, I thought instead about his impact on the world beyond the U.S. 

I remember being here in India about ten years ago with a group from The Philanthropy Workshop. We had traveled for a couple of hours outside Calcutta on a day that must have neared 125 degrees, in a bus with no air-conditioning and stopped in the middle of nowhere. In the distance I could see a ribbon of gold seeming to flow above the cracked ground. We walked toward it and found instead two rows of women waiting to greet our group. They sang and ululated, throwing marigolds over us, and the yellow of the flowers mixed with our sweat and dripped all over our faces and clothes. After treating us to cool coconut milk, the women danced for us and sang a song. We talked about their programs organizing the poor to care for themselves and fight for their rights.  And then they asked us to return the favor of singing. We couldn’t say no, but it isn’t typically an American thing to do at spontaneous meetings so we were a bit flummoxed. I was thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s fight for human rights and equality as I sat among those extraordinarily generous women and suggested we sing We Shall Overcome.

We started somewhat tentatively, and then an extraordinary thing happened.  The Indian women’s group starting singing with us in Hindi and in local dialects. We all formed a circle and held hands and kept singing, each of us in our native language, each of us understanding the spirit and hope of what the world could be.

May we all take time to remember that spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and those like him who dared to fight for others, to bring voice to the voiceless and to remind us all that we share this earth, that our futures are tied together and that our greatest gift is our shared humanity.