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‘Will You Walk With Me Today?’ By Amy McVay Abbott
"Will you walk with me today, Bishop Lord?" said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Bishop John Wesley Lord as King stepped out of his motorcade. The spring day was cool. To keep off the chill, both King and Lord wore overcoats. Lord, the Washington D.C. area bishop, stood in front of the Brown Chapel Methodist Church in Selma, Alabama, on March 9, 1965. President of the National Council of Methodist Bishops, Lord was known to King and his colleagues as a vocal advocate for civil rights. Lord had worked with President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson and others.
Peaceful marchers left the Brown Chapel and other area churches and marched to the Edmund Pettis Bridge. King and Lord walked arm-in-arm down Sylvan Street, with King's brother and other noted civil rights leaders walking five abreast. Behind them, hundreds of people of all colors and faith traditions marched. A Lifelong Activist Lord returned to Washington and spoke on Friday, March 12, to a conclave of national religious leaders at a Lutheran church two blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Cooper still has a document by her father that offered his thoughts about the meeting. Lord paraphrased John Wesley, Methodist Church founder. "All the world is my parish, and I cherish the right to preach and practice our Lord's Gospel at the point of deepest need.”
"President of the National Council of Methodist Bishops, Lord was known to King and his colleagues as a vocal advocate for civil rights."
King approached Lord and asked him to join the march, recalled Jean Lord Cooper, daughter of the Methodist bishop and activist. Cooper is now in her eighties and lives in Indiana, where she treasures the photographs and clippings of her father's life. “I'm so proud that he became a bishop of the Methodist Church in 1946," said Cooper, who was 13 at the time. She recalled her father's welcoming spirit and his ongoing fight for racial justice. Cooper remembered her father saying he could hear "We Shall Overcome" from the sanctuary of Brown Chapel Methodist Church as King arrived.
"I believe there was a deep need for Selma," Lord concluded.
Lord worked on social issues for the rest of his life, including American and global poverty, anti- Vietnam policy, birth control availability, the United Nations expansion, and the China policy.
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