MLK Day Celebration: Reflections on “The Darkness at Midnight”
Thank you Nick [Bates] for that introduction. We are grateful for your leadership of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, which, for nearly 40 years, has been one of Boston University’s jewels.
The Center is the University’s cultural hub, an inclusive space that encourages young people to step outside of their comfort zone, and to build relationships and to share their experiences with others.
This is what we do at universities. We bring people from all over the world, from all walks of life, and we form community and lifelong relationships.
Thank you, too, for hosting today’s event. This is the perfect venue to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr., who famously called Howard Thurman a mentor and a friend. Certainly, Dean Thurman had a significant influence on King, and the path towards justice that he chose to follow throughout his life.
Thank you to Mayor Wu and the City of Boston, the Dean of Students Office, Government and Community Affairs, and the BU Libraries Special Collections for their co-sponsorship of today’s celebration.
We are honored to call the City of Boston our home, and to work closely with Mayor Wu and her team on issues of peace and prosperity, and to find ways to make our communities safer, healthier, more sustainable, more affordable, and more accessible for everyone.
These goals that we share are not so different from the ones that Dr. King fought so hard for…
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… Today’s theme is “The Darkness at Midnight,” which takes inspiration from Dr. King’s speech “A Knock at Midnight.”
I’d like you, for a moment, to imagine yourself in a pew at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. I invite you to close your eyes if it feels right for you to do so.
It’s February 11, 1962, one of the several times Dr. King is reported to have given this talk, and he has just taken his place in the pulpit.
As you imagine yourself seated in the church, among the parishioners, perhaps you have invited friends to come with you, you hear the melodic baritone and building cadence of Dr. King’s voice, as he begins his exegesis on the Gospel of Luke.
“I come this morning to try to preach,” he begins, “and I would like for all others, men and women alike, to think with me from the subject: ‘A Knock at Midnight.’”
Dr. King goes on to tell the parable of a man who, in his time of need, goes to his neighbor to seek bread because he is hungry.
The man’s knocks, made at midnight, go unanswered, and the man is left alone, hungry, perhaps without hope, certainly surrounded by darkness.
As you, along with Dr. King, feel the cold that has enveloped the man in Luke’s scripture, I’d also invite you to place yourself in the historical context of King’s speech as best you can.
As King continues to speak, you begin to hear him talk about a society in a moral, spiritual, and psychological “state of chaos.”
“We are experiencing a darkness so deep that we can hardly see which way to turn,” he says.
Later, he laments that, “The great problem of mankind today is still, there is too much hatred around.”
The year was 1962.
He has taken the pulpit during the heart of the civil rights movement. It is less than a year following the Freedom Rides, and a few months prior to the integration of the University of Mississippi.
I can relate to this year, it is just one year after my own mother, Dorothy Butler Gilliam, became the first Black woman to work as a reporter for the Washington Post. It was such a good thing that they had hired her in 1961. Because she was able to go to Mississippi and cover the integration of Old Miss and meet with families and people throughout the community to tell a story that otherwise the Washington Post’s readers would not have heard.
While King preached of darkness, there was already light…
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I invite you, now, to let that hard sentiment stay with you, as you return back to 2025.
Open your eyes if they were closed, and look around at where we find ourselves today, back in Metcalf Hall, in the George Sherman Union.
What do you see? A room filled with love and concern and caring. A room full of people from all walks of life, and backgrounds, and beliefs who are sitting here in community.
I’m not a theologian, but King talked about the other side of the “dirty shade of gray” that is “midnight in the moral order” for King, which is the dawning of a new morning.
Let me tell you something, I woke up this morning and it was so dark outside, the realities of the day started to rush in, and then the sun rose, and it was a beautiful morning. Yes, there are wildfires, wars, unhoused people, and poverty. But there is also great beauty.
So, let me tell you a bit about yesterday. Yesterday, I was greeted by the staff and faculty of Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education. They taught me about their long, long history of deaf education and scholarship.
They taught me about the tradition of giving a sign name so one does not have to spell out all of the individual letters of a name. But also to signify belonging to this distinct and special community. I was invited into the deaf community and given a sign name. So yes, Dr. King, there is too much hatred, but there is so much love.
While it is dark at midnight, I am already standing in the light.
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Dr. King, of course, largely found his own solace, and a right path forward, through scripture.
At Boston University, we can look to our history, to our founding values, and to the words of leaders who have come before us, to understand this light.
Our Founding President William Fairfield Warren, called the University a society, “realizing the highest known ideals in individual and social character and life, and of propagating these ideals from one generation to another, and from one land to another, so long as the world shall stand.”
I love this quotation for its aspiration; it sets a high standard for us to reach for. And historically, the people of Boston University, and this institution, have aimed high, and at times achieved greatness.
From its beginning, Boston University has championed a diversity of backgrounds, identities, experiences, and perspectives, which is essential to learning. We have championed free speech and listening to ideas and viewpoints with which we disagree.
Knowing more about others who are different from us, and hearing genuine, real perspectives that are new to us, are both so important to putting the chaos of misinformation and hate at bay. There is nothing more beautiful or profound than learning to love, overcoming hate.
King came here to Boston University because he saw these values reflected in the people and the scholarship of our institution.
Dr. King and his mentor Dean Thurman both believed that a common humanity could bind us together, despite our differences.
Yet, how do we build this sense of trust? How do we find our common humanity?
In my mind, there is no better way than through service.
In 1957, in Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. King famously called “Life’s most persistent and urgent question… ‘What are you doing for others?’””
In one of his final sermons before his death, King said from the pulpit of his beloved Ebenezer Baptist Church,
“If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness. By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve… You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”
One of the reasons that I am so filled with joy is that I can serve others. First as a physician, scholar, and educator. And now as the leader of this university.
I know that many of us in this room, from Boston University, from Mayor Wu’s Office in the City of Boston, and others here celebrating the legacy of this incredible man… We share his vision of service as the highest ideal for us to aspire to.
At Boston University, it’s in our mission statement, that “we are committed to generating new knowledge to benefit society… and that “higher education should… be conducted in the service of the wider community—local and international.”
As I look around the room today, I see all kinds of people devoted to service: public servants, educators, students who volunteer in their communities, staff members who work tirelessly to keep our students safe and to ensure that they have what they need from their college experience.
Yes, Dr. King, there is too much hate. But that will always be true because one iota of hate is too much hate. But oh my friends, there is so much love. Let us face the challenges of today, together, let us face this new morning, together, and let us continue to serve others.
We are bound by our commitment to make a difference in the world.
As delivered on January 25, 2025 at GSU Metcalf Hall.