Civil rights bastion shares message of community to city

By Dave Thompson

Published: October 4, 2008

A civil rights figurehead visited Lynchburg for the second time in less than four years, and upward of 60 residents and city leaders gathered Saturday afternoon to hear his words.

Wyatt Tee Walker, who, among other distinctions, served as Martin Luther King Jr.’s chief of staff from 1960 to 1964, spoke at Providence Place on Saturday afternoon, delivering a sermon after first

offering comments on racial issues.

Walker, 79, introduced himself by listing his various arrests, 17 by his count.

“I was arrested in Shreveport, La., on a charge of lunacy,” he said, “and I haven’t been cleared of the charge yet,” to which laughs and applause followed.

It didn’t take Walker long to launch into his feelings about racism and politics in America, particularly the right to vote, for which he fought under King.

“Nelson Mandela spent 25 years in jail on the right to vote,” he said, encouraging those gathered to exercise that right.

And though he didn’t tell the gathering which candidate to vote for, he made no attempt to hide his support for one particular candidate.

“November 5, we will have an African-American president, and it’s possible because of the movement in which I was a participant,” he said, adding, “Barack Obama has enough sense to know that he’s standing on the shoulders of the nonviolence movement.”

Walker also served as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and came to Richmond to attend Virginia Union University, where he earned undergraduate and divinity degrees.

Walker helped to circulate King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and also helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, on which occasion King delivered his legendary “I Have a Dream” speech.

After pastoring Canaan Baptist Church in New York, Walker moved to his current residence in Chester, Va.

He visited Lynchburg in June of 2005, for the dedication of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, an event also attended by King’s son, Martin Luther King III.

A renowned international speaker, Walker tallies the countries he has visited at over 100.

But mobility issues pursuant to several strokes and a hip replacement have conspired to keep him in the country, where he admitted he will likely stay.

“I still get around pretty good,” he said, noting that Dayton and Dallas are both coming up on his itinerary.

After his initial remarks Saturday afternoon, Walker launched into his message, in which he detailed the hypothetical path of the carpenter who fashioned the cross on which Christ was crucified.

The character, at the end of the story, tells everyone that he is “getting out of the cross-making business, and getting into the cross-bearing business,” a reference to the biblical passage in which Jesus imparts to his disciples the importance of losing one’s life, in order to truly find it.

Providence Place Pastor James Coleman, who studied under Walker during his doctorate work at Union Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, said Walker’s visit coincides specifically with the recent nonviolence efforts of Churches United for Service, of which Coleman plays an integral part.

“It was so fitting that he would walk away saying that we need to get out of the business of making crosses, and begin to bear crosses for one another,” Coleman said.

“That’s the spirit,” he added, “when we waged this campaign against violence.”

Walker said though he didn’t know the specifics of Coleman’s efforts, he is seeing barriers across the country torn down, as more people realize the evils of racism.

“It’s evident that there’s a greater sense of inclusive community here,” he said.

Indicative of that, he said, was the number of white people in the audience.

“Some years ago, they would stay away from a person like me,” he said.

Coleman said Walker, because of his personality, as well as his connections to civil rights leaders through history, is an inspiring figure: a rarity these days.

“I think we’ve lost that ability to be able to inspire, and so that’s why we wanted to bring him today,” Coleman said.