Outside Reading #1(MLK)--Meredith Elliott

Recently I had to do a project on Martin Luther King Jr. and his use of the book of Exodus throughout the Civil Rights Movement. Although I have learned a lot about MLK over the years, I found it interesting that all the things you don’t learn in a public school system. While we did learn the basics, we never learned things that really made Martin Luther King Jr. the respected and admired man that he truly was. In Gary Selby’s book Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom Gary Selby brings up the use of the Exodus in several of King’s speeches. I have once upon a time learned of story of Exodus, but while reading this book I found myself going back to the Bible and reading what truly happened in the book of Exodus.
In MLK’s speeches he brought up the use of the “wilderness” that the Israelites continued to walk through to get away from the Egyptians. King was able to make sense of all the awful circumstances the African American people were going through. I find this a very powerful thing to be able to do. For people to treat someone the way these people were just on the basis of skin color just is appalling to me and to know that these people were able to say to themselves “oh well the Israelites went through it so it’s okay. We can handle it and we will get through it” is very inspirational. There are few situations where this has happened in our history and their ability to do this is remarkable. Later into the Civil Rights Movement, King was able to associate himself as the modern day Moses. After going back and reading the book of Exodus and comparing it to what King and his people were going through at the time caught me off guard. Although things in the Bible happened a long, long, long time ago it is so crazy to me to think about how much in common the two instances had.
Moses was the second most important biblical character to the African American people besides Jesus himself. This was truly an honor for King to be able to project himself as Moses and for people to accept him with this title. What really grabbed my attention throughout this book was that although King was experiencing awful things, he still was able to keep his faith. One instance stands out above the rest to me and that is when King found dynamite under his front porch that could have easily killed him and his family. After finding the dynamite, King was able to continue marching towards equality for freedom using the Exodus. His ability to still have faith even though suffering should be admired by people everywhere forever.