
          When 'Justice Rose Like Water'
          By Clark, Septima PoinsetteSeptima Poinsette Clark
          Vol. 10, No. 1, 1988, p. 15
          
          Educator and activist Septima Clark, whose long,
productive career placed her in the front lines of civil rights
activities for six decades, died on December 15, 1987, in a nursing
home on Johns Island, S.C. The next issue of Southern Changes will
include excerpts from a lengthy 1983 interview conducted with Clark by
the Southern Regional Council. Meanwhile, as ceremonies nationwide
during January honor Martin Luther King, Jr., here is the text of a
speech Clark gave at a King birthday celebration in Charleston in
1980:
          I was born in 1898, and as a girl in Charleston, South Carolina,
the church was very powerful. In the sanctuaries, Christians
rejoiced. There they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they
believed. The church is often the arch supporter of the status quo. If
it does not recapture that sacrificial spirit, it will forfeit the
loyalty of millions and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with
no meaning for the 20th Century.
          My thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr. for recapturing that
sacrificial spirit and giving his life for what he believed. He also
recaptured the American Dream. Not that he lived by the Bible, he also
called his country to live by the Constitution. When he preached, the
prophets came alive, and justice rose like water. When he walked, the
feet of millions of Americans fell in line and followed across the
country and into the nation's capitol.
          His was no middle-class campaign for civil rights. It was a
Movement that took the people into the streets to confront clubs,
hoses, horses and dogs...to face the oppressors while armed only with
the almighty power of love. To turn the cheek, not to avoid the
present pain. But to see the true nation, and new order of the future
that God was already making.
          His peace was not any cozy rally, but in reordering of our national
priorities, from military power to that of human empowerment. He did
not stop with the right to vote, and eat with white folk. Already
living in God's Kingdom, where all people live in dignity and
love. The Nobel Peace Prize maker spoke out against the war in Asia
because its bombs took breads from the tables of the poor in
America.
          Born in an economic depression in 1929, he died in a time of
spiritual depression in 1968. He was killed, like his Lord, ahead of
his time. Some say his dream died on a motel balcony. I think I speak
for many Americans when I say that he is the greatest American of our
century, and his Lord is our greatest hope for the next
century. Racism, poverty and warfare remain, yet our hearts retain the
righteous dream of God's revolutionary kingdom.
          You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity. Your
highest loyalty is to God and not to the nation. If any earthly
institution or custom conflicts with God's will, it is your Christian
duty to oppose it. Preserve the values of the faith for children yet
unborn. The end of life is not to be happy, nor to achieve pleasure
and avoid pain, but to do the will of God, come what may.
        