The celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. this week is a personal journey for me. In the autumn of 1966, I was able to sit in those pews at the Ebinezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and hear him speak to his parishoners. I was in Georgia riding buses doing voter registration drives in the rural counties of the state. We were a little group of white faced kids in a sea of black on that bright Sunday morning. Dr. King rarely spoke at his church, so this day it was filled to capacity with100 microphones in front of him as his rose to speak. The power of his words flooded the sanctuary as he cried out for the killling of little children when the bombs exploded in another Southern church. As I left the services that morning, He shook my hand and thanked me for attending. The scenes of Ebinezer this week always brings me back to that fall day in 1966. I can still feel his soft hands touching mine as we stood together at that tiny moment in my life 38 years ago.

Steve Badraun
Nampa

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