Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
A Peaceful Man

     I feel I knew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., though we never met.

     Possibly it was because he was a pastor. Pastors are special and easy to know.

     Or possibly it was because I agreed with him, that all people are equal and peaceful protests are the best kind.

     As a child, I never understood why black kids had to sit in the balcony at the movies, away from the white kids. It was wrong.

     I never understood why black diners had to eat in restaurant kitchens. It was wrong.

     As a young reporter, I spent the night at the Dallas County welfare office, where a sit-in was in progress. Local and state leaders and local welfare recipients tried to reach agreement so we could all go home. When the sun rose, we were still there.

     But it was peaceful.

     As a reporter, I heard the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Rev. Ralph Abernathy introduce a young fireball preacher named Jesse Jackson at the park across the street from The Dallas Morning News. Rev. Jackson stirred up his audience in a way I had never experienced.

     But it was peaceful.

     As a reporter, I marched with hundreds of adults and children through the streets of South Dallas, across the Harwood Street bridge into downtown, and to the steps of city hall. I had talked with police at a staging area nearby and with march leaders. Both groups spoke apprehensively about the situation, but with respect for each other.

     When a 9-year-old boy looks you in the eye and shouts, "I am ... somebody!"  nobody can argue?

     And it was peaceful.

     Dallas experienced little violence during the turbulent civil rights years. Not because everything was right in Dallas. It wasn't.

     But there were African-American pastors who agreed with Dr. King's nonviolence strategy. And Dallas leaders listened.

     Some blacks were not treated fairly. When one of Dallas' first black city councilmen, George Allen, attending a municipal leaders meeting in Atlanta, had to sleep in the lobby at a whites only hotel, it was wrong.

     But George Allen was a peaceful man, a good man.

     I remember him fondly each time I enter the George Allen Courts Building in downtown Dallas.

     I knew George Allen. I feel as though I knew Dr. King.

     They were peaceful men. Good men.

     The kind of men we always remember.

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