'We still have a choice': Bernice King calls for non-violent activism in dangerous time

Speakers at the annual Martin Luther King Jr holiday celebration in Atlanta called on Monday for renewed dedication to non-violence following a turbulent year that saw a deadly pandemic, protests over systemic racism and a divisive election capped by an insurrection on the US Capitol.

“This King holiday has not only come at a time of great peril and physical violence, it has also come during a time of violence in our speech – what we say and how we say it,” said the Rev Bernice King, the civil rights leader’s daughter.

She added: “It is frankly out of control and we are causing too much harm to one another.”

The coronavirus pandemic forced the annual King Day service at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist church to be held online during the 35th celebration of King’s birthday as a national holiday.

His family was among a sparse group at the church itself, wearing masks and sitting far apart amid mostly empty pews as others delivered remarks remotely.

Bernice King said the toll of the pandemic, lingering outrage over killings of unarmed Black people and the deadly siege of Congress in Washington on 6 January by supporters of Donald Trump, now impeached for egging them on, all underscore an urgent need to pursue what her father called “the beloved community” – a world in which conflict is solved non-violently and compassion dictates policy.

She quoted her father’s words from more than 50 years ago: “There is such a thing as being too late.

“We still have a choice today – non-violent coexistence or violent co-annihilation,” Bernice King said, again reciting the words of her father.

“This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.”

The ceremony included prerecorded remarks by the president-elect, Joe Biden, who recalled sensing the civil rights leader’s “restless spirit” during a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum housed at the Tennessee motel where King was fatally shot outside his room in 1968.

“We must not rest. It’s our responsibility to come together, all Americans, to bring peace to that restless spirit,” Biden said.

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He added: “That’s our charge in the days ahead. That’s the charge in the years ahead.”

Biden also posted a tweet on Monday afternoon.

“Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s words remind us that darkness cannot drive out darkness and hate cannot drive out hate – only light and love can. As we seek to overcome this season of darkness in America, let us choose love and light and begin to heal – together,” he tweeted.

One of Georgia’s new Democratic senators-elect, Raphael Warnock, Ebenezer’s pastor, also appealed for unity.

“Let us stand together, let us work together,” Warnock said, calling the Covid-19 pandemic a reminder that all people are “tied together, as Dr King said, in a single garment of destiny.

“Because we’re dealing with a deadly airborne disease, my neighbor coughs and I’m imperiled by the cough of my neighbor,” Warnock said. “That doesn’t make my neighbor my enemy. That means that our destiny is tied together.”

Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on 4 April 1968, while supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Had he lived, he would have turned 92 on his birthday last Friday.