David W. Pitre

In this personal and profound essay, D. Pitre writes of his own experience of change from segregationist to a "chronicler of the glory of MLK's civil rights movement," and a Quaker. As a white child brought up in segregationist Louisiana, he was taught to resent, reject, and fear M. L. King as a communist agitator seeking to destroy the legal and moral world they lived in. As a young man, he grew out of this, guided philosophically and spiritually by the experience and messages of M. L. King. He sees the unfolding of divine purpose in his life, as he was led to pacifism and Quakers. He experienced the transformation that Gandhi and King believed in and fostered through the redemptive love that they practiced, a transformation from hatred and despair to reassessment, conciliation, and gentleness, hope, and faith. He reflects out of his own and our collective experience on the process and potential of the gentle, loving, powerful Way. It is extraordinary to read this well-written first-hand story of the transformation that loving non-violent resistance can bring.… (más)