Crowd Gathers to Commemorate Civil Rights Leader

About 300 people attended a Memorial Church service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, on what would have been the 72nd birthday of the slain civil rights leader.

The crowd filled the pews for the annual celebration, to hear the Rev. Lawrence E. Carter give a keynote sermon that underscored the need for faith and a sense of spirituality that tolerates racial and ethnic differences.

In his address--titled "Be the Change You Wish To See"--Carter told the congregation that individuals must strengthen their personal morality before they expect others to help fulfill King's optimistic dreams.

"You can't expect to better the world without improving yourself while showing a respect for all humanity," Carter said.

Sounding this theme repeatedly, Carter emphasized in his preaching that cold, detached intellect does not meet the standard of King's humanistic visions.

"I am suspicious of education," Carter said, prompting a hearty round of laughter from the lively crowd.

"Reading, writing and arithmetic are only imporant if they make people more human," he continued. "We don't want to create skilled psychopaths. The Holocaust was caused by people who called themselves Christians."

A widely published preacher, Carter is dean of the International Chapel at Morehouse College in Atlanta and has taught at many other schools, including Harvard Divinity School and Boston University, where he was associate dean of Marsh Chapel.

This year's service boasted an unusual amount of audience participation. In the spirit of King's historic "I Have a Dream" speech, the ministers asked audience members to write down their own dreams. They asked several people to read aloud during the service.

Some were quite specific: Several people wrote that they hope President Clinton pardons Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who was convicted and sentenced in 1977 for killing two FBI agents.

Others wrote that they dream of an end to all racial bigotry and violence, that King's dreams of perfect acceptance of all people will become reality.

"I would like people to look beyond superficial differences and hold true compassion for nature and for all people," said one audience member.

"I dream that we will be able to unite across all beautiful differences," said another.

Although such optimistic goals may seem out of reach, Carter said, they are realistic and require respect for divinity because the world is in the midst of a "quantum leap."

Carter said that people do not need to foresake their own religions to understand others, citing civil disobedience leader Mohandas K. Gandhi's devotion to Hinduism alongside his understanding of Christianity.

"Gandhi was very astute in understanding the subterranean divinity," Carter said.

Audience members said they found Carter's speech captivating because he spoke from a unique perspective.

"It's useful for us to have a minister who brings us a tradition of the Atlantic and the South, and he made it relevant to New England and the civil rights movement," said Florence C. Ladd, a resident scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

--Staff writer Keith J. Lo can be reached at kjlo@fas.harvard.edu.