Thursday, January 15, 2004

By Monica L. Haynes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Today would have been the 75th birthday of a man who fought and died for the kind of world imagined in Manchester's poem, which is included in the new book "Open My Eyes, Open My Soul: Celebrating Our Common Humanity."

	Book excerpt Read an excerpt from "Paths To The Creator," by Sharon RedHawk Love.

Edited by Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, Yolanda King, and writer Elodia Tate, the book is an anthology of poems and stories about overcoming racial, cultural and religious differences.

"We have to celebrate difference until difference doesn't make a difference in how we treat each other," said King from her Los Angeles home.

It's certainly the message she grew up with as the eldest child of the iconic civil rights leader and his wife, Coretta Scott King, who wrote the forward to the book.

"My father never talked about his beliefs; he just lived them. As did my mother," King said.

However, she recalls having to take another look at her father's philosophy while she was a student at Smith College.

"There was quite a bit of tension on my campus. A lot of separation between the races, a lot of hostility," King said.

Those tensions forced her to re-examine the beliefs she had always espoused. Did she believe in nonviolence and racial harmony because she was taught to, or did she believe in it because it was the proper path to choose?

King concluded that the techniques and methods that had been instilled in her from childhood indeed worked to defuse racial tension and provide understanding.

"I came to this not only as the offspring of someone who knew and believed it ferociously and tenaciously, but because of my own experience as well," King said.

In addition to some fiction and poetry, the book, she said, includes real life stories of "people just trying to find their way through their lives and make a heart connection with someone."

She notes that the works chosen were the "cream of the crop." However, the Manchester poem "just particularly resounds with me.. . . It's a wonderful piece."

Tate, a writer from Modesto, Calif., approached King about doing the book after hearing her speak at Modesto Community College in January 2001. But the writer didn't catch up with King until November of that year.

"We connected from the first meeting," King said. "I liked her immediately, and I loved the idea."

She said the message of the book was an extension of everything she had been doing as a speaker and onstage as an actor.

"It is impossible to come up with too many ways to get this message out."

King solicited works for the book wherever she spoke.

When she visited the Penn State University Altoona campus more than a year ago, Sharon RedHawk Love was in the audience.

Love, an assistant professor of criminal justice, sociology and women's studies, decided to submit a story for the book "not thinking it would make the cut, because I knew this was going to be a national project, but it did."

Her story, "Paths to the Creator," focuses on a young Native American who seeks his grandfather's guidance in finding which is the right way to the Creator. Love, a Native American, said Native Americans often teach life lessons through stories.

Writers received a $300 stipend and Love sent half of hers to a reservation in Rosebud, S.D. The other half will be donated to the university's black student association.

"One of the important things we teach is diversity, to respect different groups . . . to respect each individual as you encounter them and not to make negative stereotypes, to honor other people their thoughts, their witness and their words," she said.

In addition to previously published and unpublished authors, the book includes noted writers such as Maya Angelou and celebrities Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali and Margaret Cho. Whoopi Goldberg, Harry Belafonte and Bono also wanted to contribute but could not because of schedules and time constraints, King said.

She believes until people realize and understand that we are more alike than we are different, and that violence provides no resolution, "we're going to continue to have the struggles and the conflicts and all the horrors that exist in humanity."

Monday, the federal Martin Luther King Day holiday, King will travel to Atlanta for commemorative services at the King Center. Her brother Martin is set to take over the helm there, and she wants to support him, she said.

She's also scheduled to speak at the University of Oklahoma.

King said rather than taking a day off, people are encouraged to commit to some kind of community service on MLK Day.

"That's what it should be about," King said. "We can come together as a family doing something to give back."

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to The King Center and Teaching Tolerance.

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