Kneeland Brown is the pastor of Wichita’s Tabernacle Bible Church and the keynote speaker for the upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr Celebration at Wichita State.
For this edition of “In The Mix,” Carla Eckels spoke with Brown about the importance of King’s legacy.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pastor Brown, you’re 44 years old and weren't born when Dr. King was alive. What resonates with you about the preacher and civil rights leader?
I believe that Dr. King has to be understood, in my perspective, as a prophetic voice. Dr. King was a preacher and a pastor first who encountered a movement in Montgomery, Alabama that was already underway. Now, interpretation through history suggests that he was a great philosopher seeking a movement to attach himself to and that's kind of the way Dr. King is presented. But if you really look at what Dr. King and Coretta Scott King were doing when they arrived at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — they were pastoring and preaching. So, I argue [that] Dr. King was a pastor and a preacher who encountered a movement at the right time. And so, as I reflect on who he is, to me, he is a representation of the power of being faithful to being God's mouthpiece during the season and the period in which you exist.
Quite often, people know the “I Have a Dream” speech, but they may not know much else about Dr. King.
You have to look beyond one moment at the Capitol Mall in front of these thousands of people. You have to look at the writings that took place in the Birmingham Jail. You have to look at the writings that took place in local congregations and at local universities as he traveled in nations.
Because at that point, he's speaking to the mother, the father, the brother, the sister, the boy and the girl who are going to go out and march that day, that week. And so, I believe a holistic reading, of his writings, is helpful to understanding not only him, but the time he spoke in and the people who heard his words and continued to be moved to action.
How did you learn about Dr. King?
I was blessed to be in a home where both my mother and my father didn't hold history afar from us. My mother being from Vrendenburg, Alabama, [and] my father being from Harlem, New York. They had known segregation and segregated schooling. My father had to threaten legal action in the city of Woodland, CA, to purchase the home that I was brought to when I was born. Now, mind you, he's threatening to sue the city [while] being a Vietnam-era veteran, which means he could serve in the military on behalf of his country, but he couldn't buy a house to raise his children, and when he had the money to buy it after leaving the military. So how do I know these things? These things all happened well before I was born. I know them because history met us around the dinner table in my home.
It's almost as though, my parents would, in some ways, deconstruct some of the things I was told in my classroom about history and reconstruct in my own mind so I knew who I was, because the publishers of these textbooks were not getting it right at all whatsoever, and I would have had such a flawed view of myself as an American and as an individual as a whole. So with that in mind, I learned a lot of my family's history and narrative at the feet of my parents, my grandparents, the elders of my local church, Black history celebrations in my local church, recitations, you know, memorizing and saying speeches, so on and so forth.
My church played a strong role in shaping my self-identity and helping me to locate myself as a young Black male. And that was tremendously helpful, because there were a lot of very destructive narratives about young Black males when I was growing up in the 1980s during the crack epidemic in the Black community, which ripped and tore our community apart and my concern today is particularly for our young people. So many of them do not have those voices who help them to define themselves. So, [the] television, social media, music that they [consume] defines how they see themselves as young women and young men and so I learned a lot about the movement through the lens of the lived history of my own family, but that also gave me a burden.
Now you and your wife have seven children. What do you think is missing when people talk to the youth about the legacy of Dr. King?
I think what our young people miss is the ability of the common, everyday citizen ... [can] make an impactful difference.
[Dr. King] didn't saddle some movement upon his back, preach it and then go out and do it by himself. It was faithful people thinking strategically, with a number of different gifts and talents, bringing them to the table ... that made a movement happen. And that's what I desire our young people to see: That all of us have a contribution to make to the betterment of our community and the betterment of our society. And I want them to know this "simply sitting and critiquing what we don't like, but not doing anything" is absolutely useless.
If you're concerned about those who are unhoused, go out and help them. If you're concerned about those who are hungry, bring them some food. There are too many voices criticizing but not taking action. And that's what I want our young people to know. They can make a difference if they harness their gifts and abilities and move forward to make a difference.
When you heard the theme, "Dream Delayed / Mission Possible," what mission would you like to see accomplished?
I believe the mission today is to answer the questions in our community and meet the challenges in our community. My vision is for us [to become] a community that rises up, sees what our needs are, bands together to meet those needs, not waiting for someone else to come and rescue us, but us having that same prophetic fire that Dr. King had to speak to a future we will likely not even live to see, and hand that gift to our children.
You'll be the keynote speaker at the Greater Ministerial League’s MLK Celebration this year. What do you want them to take away from your message?
I want them to hear the voice of God through the words that are spoken. When you think of events like the Edmund Pettus Bridge, you have to ask yourself: What makes you go out and try and march in a specific location to come under attack, be arrested, be beaten, be bit by dogs, be violently met and chased away and fail and come back again?
Before they went to the street, they'd meet in a church — a gathering place, and in that gathering place, they would sing the Word, they would pray the Word of God, and they would preach the Word of God until their souls were warmed, and, as one historic theologian would say, "strangely moved." And once their souls were strangely moved, they had the power to go out.
My hope is that on January 20, when we gather together for the celebration of MLK Day — I know there's a presidential inauguration taking place, but that's not my concern — my concern is, if God strangely moves the souls of the people in Wichita, Kansas, it won't matter who's in the White House, because we will take ownership of the space, the time and the place in which we are. And that really is my aim, that by the time I finish speaking, our souls are moved in such a way, in such a visceral and meaningful way, that we want to go out and make a difference.
Dr. Kneeland Brown is the pastor of Wichita’s Tabernacle Bible Church and an Associate Professor at Friends University. He’ll be the keynote speaker at the Greater Wichita Ministerial League’s MLK Celebration, on Monday, January 20 at noon at the WSU Metroplex.
