mordecai johnson and gandhi

Mordecai Wyatt Johnson (1890-1976), born in Paris, Tennessee, earned a B.A. "In spring 1950, at age 21, Martin Luther King heard Dr. Mordecai Johnson, the president of Howard University, deliver a sermon on Gandhi. Everywhere in the world people saw that, and were inspired, and everybody in the world to this day identifies with... Martin Luther King's expression of the American dream. In response, Gandhi called for a day of national fasting, meetings, and suspension of work on 6 April 1919, as an act of Within the next few years, Gandhi reshaped the existing Indian National Congress into a mass movement promoting Indian self-rule through a boycott of British goods and institutions, and leading to the arrests of thousands of satyagrahis. I had gone largely for personal reasons, namely because my own spiritual journey had been deeply influenced by multiple religious traditions.But then Nelson Mandela spoke, and what he said changed everything.He began by pointing out into the cape, toward Robben Island, where he spent over 25 years in prison, and uttered these words:  Marcel Proust famously said that the true journey of discovery was not in seeing new landscapes but in developing new eyes. C. T. Vivian. At the age of 18, Gandhi began training as a lawyer in England. For example, in his famous sermon  “A Time to Break Silence,”  he said: “The Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality” is that love is the “supreme unifying principle of life.” We are witnessing a movement for racial equity that echoes some of the highest hopes of the civil rights movement, the struggle against apartheid, and the Hind Swaraj movement. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. heard the president of Howard University, Mordecai Johnson, speak about a trip he took to India in 1950, King was so inspired by the life and teachings of Mohandas Gandhi that he immediately began educating himself about the Indian leader. © Copyright 2020, Religion News Service. (RNS) — Then too, a Democrat was charged with being godless.The Rev. Mahatma Gandhi is often noted as providing King with a philosophy that espoused civil disobedience and nonviolence at its core.

So, too, were nonreligious people. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our "Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. The address had such an effect on King he went out and bought six books on the subject. Upon his death, Mohandas K. Gandhi was hailed by the London Times as the most influential figure India has produced for generations (Mr. Gandhi). In fact, amongst Gandhi’s two closest companions in the movement to free India was Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Muslim from Afghanistan, and Jawaharlal Nehru, a famous secularist who rose to become India’s first prime minister. In the spring of 1930, Gandhi and 80 volunteers began a 200-mile march to the sea, where they produced salt from seawater to defy the British Salt Laws, which ensured that the British colonial government recovered a tax from the sale of salt. (Enter your ZIP code for information on American Experience events and screening in your area. At this point, he was coincidentally introduced to the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi in a sermon by Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, who had just returned from a trip to India. The idea that racial equality could be advanced through interfaith cooperation was brand-new and totally inspiring. Al Sharpton, families of police shooting victims join march on WashingtonMarch on Washington events to focus on racial justice, police brutality, votingWriting the inspirational Sikh story my children — and everyone — need to seeAmid escalated police presence, Episcopal church offers sanctuary to protesters in Pasadena Johnson's subsequent sermon on Gandhism in 1950 at Fellowship House, Philadelphia, was so inspirational to King that he immediately bought several books on Gandhi and began his own in-depth study of the man and his vision.

It helped bring down the Berlin Wall. King, who was known as the American Gandhi, went on what he called a “four-week pilgrimage in India, which to me means Mahatma Gandhi.” (AP Photo/R. (1923) from Howard University and also graduated from Gammon Theological Seminary (1928). Civil rights leader Andrew Young believes King's "I Have a Dream" speech "made the history not only of the civil rights movement... [but] helped get Nelson Mandela out of jail. Dr. Mordecai Johnson gave the lecture while Dr. King was in seminary. It felt like Mandela had given me new eyes.In South Africa, a movement of racial equity had been a site for interfaith cooperation. "We must use the weapon of love," he told the New York Times. Mordecai Johnson, president emeritus of Howard University; William Kunstler, special counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union; and Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse College, were some of the distinguished members of the Gandhi Society’s board. A testament to the revolutionary power of nonviolence, Gandhis approach directly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., who argued that the Gandhian philosophy was the onl… Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta, both wearing garlands, are received by admirers after landing at the airport in New Delhi on Feb. 10, 1959. It was in South Africa that Gandhi was first exposed to official racial prejudice, and where he developed his philosophy of nonviolent direct action by organizing the Indian community there to oppose race-based laws and socioeconomic repression.