minister (religion); lawyer; civil rights activist
Personal Information
Born Bernice Albertine King, March 28, 1963; daughter of Martin Luther, Jr. (a civil rights pioneer) and Coretta (a social activist and singer; maiden name, Scott) King.
Education: Spelman College, bachelor's degree in psychology, 1985; Emory University, J.D. and M.Div., 1990.
Religion: Baptist.
Memberships: Active Ministers Engaged in Nurturance (AMEN).
Career
Intern with City Attorney's Office, Atlanta, GA; student chaplain at the Georgia Retardation Center and at Georgia Baptist Hospital, 1985-90; first public speech, St. Sabina Church, Chicago, 1983; first sermon, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, 1988; ordained Baptist minister, 1990; Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, assistant minister, 1990-93; Greater Rising Star Baptist Church, Atlanta, began as associate minister, became assistant minister, 1994; has worked as a law clerk in Georgia's Fulton County juvenile court system; Cofounder, Active Ministers Engaged in Nurturing (AMEN); Chair, national advisory committee, National King Week College and University Student Conference on Kingian Nonviolence.
Life's Work
On March 27, 1988, Bernice Albertine King gave her first sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta; the church was packed with well-wishers witnessing the inaugural sermon of the third generation of Kings to preach there. As the youngest daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., she had come before the public eye at an early age. Bernice King will long be remembered as the mournful five-year-old pictured with her mother, Coretta Scott King, at Martin Luther King's funeral--a scene captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Moneta Sleet, Jr. As an adult, King maintains high visibility through her own work as preacher, public speaker, and civil rights activist.
Even decades after her father's brutal assassination, the gravity of his work and his ideals live on. Coretta Scott King, an active public speaker and president of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, made it her mission to teach her children and others about the civil rights struggle and its violent past. As she said in an interview with Lynn Norment of Ebony: "I will always be out here doing the things I do, and I'm not going to stop talking about Martin and promoting what I think is important in terms of teaching other people, particularly young people, his meaning so they can live in such a way to make a contribution to our advancement and progress."
This philosophy was instilled in Bernice and her siblings. Yolanda, the eldest King child, is an actress, producer, lecturer, and director of cultural affairs at the King Center; Martin Luther III is active in Atlanta politics; and Dexter Scott King also works for the King Center and travels extensively on its behalf. All of them have chosen to spread their messages in their own way without any parental coercion. Bernice King told Essence: "My mother never tried to force us to do anything. We have made our own choices, and I can really credit my mother for that because she never wanted to make a choice for us. She always let us make our own decisions, and so anything I do in connection with the King Center and my father's legacy, continuing his work, is something to which I feel a strong personal commitment."
Bernice King has known for a long time what direction her activities would take. In the sixth grade, she decided she would become a lawyer and be the first black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. When she was seventeen, she was called into the ministry. "I think that in a sense my calling to the ministry will be the perpetuation of the flame, the spirit of my father living on," she told Ebony in 1987. She always had high goals and the belief that nothing could stop her from achieving them. In USA Weekend, her mother recalled, "Her feeling, at an early age, that there were no barriers where women were concerned was a good thing. Bernice had not been a part of segregation the way the generation earlier was. She was aware of it, of course, but she did not have many of the bitter experiences. So she felt things were pretty open to her. Bernice always set her goals pretty high."
King decided to pursue her interests in both law and theology. After earning her bachelor's degree at Spelman College, she enrolled in a dual-degree program at Emory University. In June of 1990 she finished the program and received her J.D. (doctor of jurisprudence) and M.Div. (master of divinity) degrees.
Despite her arduous studies, King still found time for her work as an activist and public speaker. She gave her first major speech in 1983, when she was only twenty years old, at St. Sabina Church in Chicago. Later that same year, she addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York. In 1985, and again in 1986, she was arrested with her siblings while protesting South African apartheid. Two years later she gave her fist public sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Since her graduation from Emory, King has had public speaking engagements at high schools, colleges, churches, and youth group centers.
King's main message as a public speaker is that as individuals, we must do more to unite all people; as a country, the United States has not yet made adequate progress in the realm of race relations, civil rights, and social justice. At a high school graduation in East Palo Alto, California, for example, she told the students that while they should be proud of themselves, they have "to keep going." She does not mince words. "We have brothers and sisters with forty and fifty dollar hairstyles and a nickel worth of brains," she was quoted as saying in the Peninsula Times Tribune. "What we need is educated people of good will and moral courage who will stand up and be counted."
In advocating nonviolent change and a larger goal of world peace, King spoke out vehemently against the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf. According to the Los Angeles Times , she told an audience of nearly 2,000 at Santa Monica College that the war was a fight between "two men who have to satisfy their male egos." And she pulls no punches when addressing powerful leaders directly. At the 1992 Martin Luther King Day ceremonies at the King Center, she spoke directly to President George Bush, who was sitting on the stage of Freedom Hall with her. As quoted in the Washington Post, she declared, "Lord, have mercy on us, for how dare we celebrate when the bank of justice has been robbed, the storehouse of knowledge had been contaminated, and the citadel of truth has been raped and violated. How dare we celebrate when the ugly face of racism still peers out at us."
While Bernice may be voluntarily following in her father's footsteps, it has at times been hard for her. She is often compared to her father, especially since she began preaching publicly. People who have seen them both give sermons claim that her mannerisms and inflections are very similar to his. On the occasion of her first sermon at Ebenezer, then mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young told Jet magazine, "It almost makes you believe preaching is hereditary. So many of her mannerisms and so much of her style is so much like her daddy." King has resigned herself to the comparisons. She told USA Weekend, "It's something I'm going to have to wrestle with for quite some time, but I'm willing to accept it because that's part of the struggle; that's part of being the child of someone who made such a great impact."
If her style mirrors that of her father, many of her goals are uniquely her own. With her combined law and theology degrees, she helped establish a teen prison ministry where she can give legal and spiritual advice to troubled youth. "A lot of our young people who are locked up in our jails and prisons are there because they don't know who they are, the potential that they have. I want to help them to channel their energy into more positive means," she told USA Weekend. "It's easy to hit somebody; it's easy to strike out. It takes a whole lot of commitment to something higher than yourself not to do something delinquent." She will be starting from scratch in such a program, since none had been set up prior to the early 1990s, but she is confident of her own success.
The theme of King's first sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church reflected her entire philosophy. "You've got to rise up above the crowd," she told her congregation. This is what she continues to tell her audiences and what she intends to help young criminal offenders accomplish. King continued to distinguish herself as both a preacher and an activist in her own right, serving a new generation of people dedicated to social change.
However, King eventually left the Ebenezer Baptist Church to join the ministry at Atlanta's Greater Rising Star Baptist Church instead, because she felt it would "provide an opportunity for my personal growth and participation," as she stated in Ebony. She was also buoyed by the church's various community programs, including substance abuse help and afterschool child care services. By 1994, she was an associate minister in charge of the singles ministry there, although she continued to be a member of Ebenezer's parish and a member of their Martin Luther King Sr. choir. In 1995 King became a senior pastor at Greater Rising Star, in charge of the youth and women's ministry, preaching about a dozen times a year there. She also travels frequently as a guest minister to churches around the nation.
In 1996, King published a collection 17 public addresses she had given in a book titled Hard Questions, Heart Answers: Sermons and Speeches. Even in print form, reviewers favorably compared her style to her father's. "People often make comparisons between my way of speaking and my father's," she expressed in a Jet article. "They say that I sound like him; that I remind them of him; that many of my words resonate with the same passion as his."
However, King's message differs from his in that she approaches race relations from a more personal standpoint, as opposed to a greater social one. As she remarked to Edwards in Ladies Home Journal, "We need to start confronting the issue of race straight on. There needs to be a dialogue between ministries. You come to my church, I come to yours. Understanding removes the tension and fear." She also noted to Kim Hubbard in People, "The civil rights movement addressed the legal side, but you can't legislate beliefs. Blacks and whites have got to figure out how to connect genuinely to each other's experiences if we're going to coexist."
In addition, King has been outspoken about addressing the issue of sexism, particularly in churches. Then, at an appearance on Long Island just before Martin Luther King Day in January of 2000, she also warned the crowd of the dangers of materialism in modern society. According to Olivia Winslow in Newsday, King commented, "These things are destroying the foundation and fiber of American society, arrogance and elitism, materialism and greed, and selfishness."
In January 2001, King was quoted in The Morning Call (Allentown, PA), as advising whites to act as if they had caused the suffering of minorities, particularly blacks, even if they were not in fact responsible, because, she said, it would help both groups come to a greater understanding. Added King, "Because if you treat it like you caused it, then you can bring in some real healing." But she also advised blacks not to assume that all whites are racists. "Everything is not because of racism. There are some things that are our own fault," she said.
King has not married to date. Reporters have often quizzed her about this, and she once told Cleage that men might be intimidated by her, both because she is a professional woman and because of her name. She also believes that some men might be put off because she is a preacher. However, she has expressed at various times her desire to marry and have a family. King lives in a suburb of Atlanta and in her spare time, she enjoys bowling, tennis, and listening to music.
Further Reading
Sources
- Ebony, January 1987; November 1992.
- Essence, January 1989.
- Jet, July 15, 1985; January 27, 1986; January 18, 1988; April 11, 1988; May 23, 1988; June 11, 1990; April 11, 1988; January 19, 1998.
- Ladies Home Journal, January 1998.
- Los Angeles Times, January 22, 1991; January 18, 1992.
- The Morning Call (Allentown, PA), January 13, 2001.
- New York Times, January 9, 1986.
- Peninsula Times Tribune, May 18, 1992.
- People, January 27, 1997.
- USA Weekend, January 18-20, 1991.
- Washington Post, January 18, 1992.
— Robin Armstrong
