Written by Joseph Dickerson
“Freedom is fragile. Justice is fragile. Liberty is fragile,” Rev. Aaron Johnson reminded those who attended his speech on Monday, March 15.
Johnson, a 77-year-old pastor and highly acclaimed civil rights activist, and Deb Cleveland, an author and newspaper columnist, spoke to students at Harding University, supporting civil rights and promoting their book “Man from Macedonia: My Life of Service, Struggle, Faith and Hope.”
Johnson was born in Willard, N.C. into a world of hate and racial tension. When he was five months old, his family experienced the brutal lynching of a local black man.
“Black people were lynched as examples, mostly young men,” Johnson said.
Memories of that and other experiences growing up as a black male brought Johnson into a search for civil rights and racial equality.
He had the privilege of working under Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before his death on April 4, 1968, and learned to take the nonviolent approach to civil rights action.
Johnson served as advisor to three North Carolina governors and President Ronald Reagan on race relations and as North Carolina’s Secretary of Corrections, working with Chuck Colson on the Prison Fellowship program.
Johnson and Cleveland came together so that these stories of the struggle for racial equality would not be lost.
“The purpose of this book is to pass these stories on to the younger generations,” Johnson said.
Cleveland and Johnson are traveling to different cities talking to everyone from city and state leaders to students.
“This is a mountaintop experience for me to be sitting here looking into the faces of the future,” said Johnson when he spoke to Harding students.
Cleveland introduced Johnson by giving some background information on both Johnson and herself. She then read the story of the murder and lynching from their book before Johnson spoke.
Johnson talked about his work with Chuck Colson who wrote the forward to the book. Colson was implicated in the Watergate scandal as a member of President Richard Nixon’s Chief Counsel and was sentenced to prison in 1974. He converted to Christianity while in prison and since then has had a hand in many programs for rehabilitating inmates, such as the Prison Fellowship program he worked on with Johnson.
Johnson shared how Martin Luther King Jr. Day became an official holiday under President Ronald Reagan. He and Reagan met while Reagan was campaigning, and he asked Johnson to give the prayer at the Republican National Convention.
After Reagan was elected, Johnson worked with him to get Martin Luther King Jr. Day nationally recognized as a reminder to all Americans to celebrate their freedom.
“Racism can raise its head up anytime,” Johnson said. “If we are not careful it could happen to us.”
He reminded students that they need to be building a world free of segregation.
“We need to leave things better than we found them,” Johnson said.
