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At Night
by William Bittner

 !e Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II has a very 
clear idea of how the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther 
King, Jr. should be remembered. Not the way one 
remembers a lost hero, an "oh, well, he did more 
than enough with the time he had." Not the way one 
remembers painkillers before surgery, a "felt good, 
but hope it's not needed again." Not the way one 
remembers a martyr, because who gets anything 
from remembering.
 On a heavy-skied Friday night inside 
Birmingham, Alabama's Sixteenth Street Baptist 
Church, the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II called 
for re-engagement, not remembrance. He asked if 
Dr. King would be satis"ed when Washington, D.C. 
descended on Selma a few weeks later, vultures 
feasting on the corpse of a movement they killed 
again as o#en as they rolled back rights and shoveled 
Medicare-For-All money into the great furnaces 
buried beneath the Pentagon. He asked how to 
remember a martyr, and then he told us.
 Flannery O'Connor, the great writer and 
observer from Georgia, said, "While the South is 
hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-
haunted." As I listened to the Reverend Dr. William J. 
Barber II, as I rode home under the pregnant clouds, 
as I lay awake in bed that night, I felt the weight of 
ghosts over the city.

—

 A gospel choir stood nervously behind the pulpit 
as we entered the church proper. !ere were maybe 
a dozen singers, all but one people of color and, 
ironically, the single white member was positioned 
front and center.
 !e Sixteenth Street Baptist Church feels to 
me like the heart of our state. In 1963 the Ku Klux 
Klan bombed the church, killing four young girls at 
Sunday school. Doug Jones, who would later become 
the "rst Democratic senator from Alabama in two 
decades, prosecuted the terrorists. With $300,000 in 
donations and a Welsh gi# of stained glass (depicting 
Jesus as a Black man, one hand oppression, the other 

mercy), the Church rebuilt itself. Now, it rebuilds 
others with the cheek-turned-ness of their God, 
an optimism outsiders like myself o#en read as 
forgetfulness.
 In this strange place, the city's refuge and 
Heaven's waiting room, it felt disrespectful to ask 
where the bathroom was.
 Of course, the choir, when they began to sing, 
didn't make it easy to accept that this was a church, 
not a temple. In a church, God listens when you 
speak; in a temple, when God speaks, you listen.
 !e Lord our God is omnipotent, they sang. As 
I took my seat, they looked again and again to the 
organist. Like a new driver looks mirror, mirror, 
speedometer, and so on, they looked organist, us, 
each other, and the God on the roof who we were 
all supposed to be okay with, as though the ceiling 
wasn't about to collapse under his weight.
 I've always found it strange when churches have 
an American $ag next to the pulpit. I don't know how 
they do it in the North or—God forbid—Europe, 
but they've been conspicuous in my time south of 
the Mason-Dixon Line. It's contradictory, right? To 
place a symbol of anti-monarchism in the court of 
a heavenly king. !ey repeat that word, our loving 
king, our king in heaven, the memory of Dr. King. 
Perhaps they ought to dump manna in the harbor.
 I didn't say that, of course, with the Holy Ghost 
peering through the stained glass.

—

 I remember passing the pastor's study. It was 
the closest I ever felt to standing before the Ark of 
the Covenant. I walked away, imagining the Ten 
Commandments lying inside, the miraculous golden 
glow as I am struck down for my curiosity, instead of 
a $aking desk and an orange blanket of lamplight.

—

 !e "rst I knew the Reverend Dr. William J. 
Barber II was in the building was when a woman 
a few rows back loudly whispered, "Look! !ere 



At Night

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202481

he is!" A couple days later, I said the same thing 
when Hamilton walked on stage while I was seeing 
Hamilton.
 !e Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II plodded 
to the pulpit. !rough the gauze of history, it can 
be hard to remember that young men age. He was a 
heavy-set man, walking with a cane and tragedy on 
his back. He wore a mask, the real kind that doctors 
and old people wear, with straps that hung down over 
his shoulders like wires. I immediately thought of a 
background character in a Star Wars cantina. I don't 
remember the color of his hair; I got the message by 
that point.
 I was not encouraged by the state of the Reverend 
Dr. William J. Barber II. It seemed I was a few decades 
late. I tapped my mom on the shoulder and asked 
her if we should "nd a closer seat, or if I should just 
strain my ears when he inevitably began mumbling. 
I was mired in that jelly of skepticism as a college 
student read out the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber 
II's resume, only perking up when he got to the 
unusual bits. A typical LinkedIn pro"le doesn't put 
"seventeen arrests for nonviolent civil disobedience" 
at the top, next to education. What I at "rst thought 
was the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II nodding 
o% was in fact a man's silent revving, the runner 
ready for the gun and tired of the ego stroking. 
 Over the course of "ve minutes in which he didn't 
say a single word, my perception of him changed so 
greatly that even he would call it radical.

—

 "Concussion ghosts, traveling in waves, touched 
our tent walls and made them quiver. Ghosts were 
shaking the ground ever so lightly. Ghosts were stirring 
the dogs to hysteria. Ghosts were wandering in the sky 
peering for us in our cringing hideout. Ghosts were 
everywhere, and their hordes were multiplying as 
every hour added its production..."
—Ernie Pyle, Little Boys Lost in the Dark

—

 !e Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II began 
his speech with a message about peace. He called 
for cutting the military budget, always tossing in an 
"and it would still be more than Russia and China 
combined!" to soothe the racing nerves of white 
moderates. He was militantly anti-militant, the kind 
of man who missed the Vietnam protests and had 

to run to catch up. What made this plank of his 
platform, what he called the "Moral Budget," stick 
out was something I saw a few hours earlier.
 I had eaten a cheeseburger and was walking 
around Railroad Park in downtown Birmingham, 
petting dogs when their owners would let me. An 
elevated railroad runs alongside this grassy expanse, 
cutting into the heart of the city like a bullet before 
exiting into the iron-red countryside. An Amtrak 
passed. Half an hour later, cargo piled high on rolling 
stock passed, and a#er that, tanks of natural gas. 
!en, as the sky grew orange like the pastor's study, 
the last train of the day appeared, painted brownish-
green. For minutes, car a#er car a#er car rolled 
through the city. !ey were loaded with armored 
vehicles and "eld ambulances, big guns pointing 
ahead and red crosses painted every so o#en on the 
side. It continued like that until the moon hung low, 
long a#er I had le#. !ey were headed to Ukraine.
 I was a little more humble when the Reverend 
Dr. William J. Barber II spoke about peace a#er that. 
I wonder if he saw the procession.

—

 "How do we remember a martyr?"
 A good question.
 "We don't remember," the Reverend Dr. William 
J. Barber II continued, his voice booming and 
swaying like a crane in a windstorm. "We re-engage. 
Luke 11:47 states, 'Woe to you! For you build the 
tombs of the prophets whom your father killed.'"
 He spoke, again, of the annual delegation from 
Washington, D.C. to Selma, to retrace the footsteps 
taken on Bloody Sunday, the ones who would then 
leave, return to their o&ces, and retrace the footsteps 
which made America a nation that spilled blood on 
Sundays in the "rst place.
 "Would Dr. King be satis"ed with that?" he asked. 
"!at's the problem with remembrance. Everyone 
wants to get in the blessings line, no one wants to 
get in the cross-bearing line, but that's where the 
power is. Do you think Dr. King was satis"ed when 
they told him, 'You've done enough - now go be a 
professor'? A lot of folks don't know this, but the 
March on Washington, one of the things they wanted 
was a two-dollar minimum wage. Do you know what 
that is in today's money? Fi#een dollars! Would Dr. 
King be satis"ed?"



At Night

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202482

 I wondered if he asked himself that in the mirror 
every morning. He had it to a tee, the way a diabetic 
pricks themself so de#ly they don't feel pain.
 "Would Dr. King be satis"ed to know that we 
spend more on our military today than we ever did 
in Vietnam?"
 !us began the platform pitch, the bullet points 
on the Poor Peoples' Campaign website, which he 
was before us to represent. I appreciated the name. 
Simple and true.
 "When the Amazon plant over in Bessemer was 
voting to unionize, do you know where Dr. King 
would have been? Right there with them! And when 
Amazon intimidated those workers and no one 
batted an eye, would Dr. King be satis"ed?"
 I wish we used Dr. King's memory more centrally 
in the labor movement. My interests, my outlook. 
Contrarianism. Used. !e Reverend Dr. William J. 
Barber II ri$ed through the rest of the platform, met 
with cheers and choruses of mmm-hmm! a#er each 
bullet point. He "nished by asking us to send a text 
to the Poor Peoples' Campaign, to put us on their 
donor list.
 Used.
 !ere was something deeply melancholic to me 
about the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, even at 
the heights of his righteous anger. It could have been 
the latent human sadness upon seeing a young man 
made old, the weight on the body and soul. Time 
dilated around him, a man who, like Dr. King to an 
early grave, was pulled into the history books before 
his story was done. But to say it stops there would be 
to sell short the man who stood for two hours, who 
asked us to support a cause we should have supported 
by default since we "rst learned about brotherly love 
in Sunday school, and who walked back through the 
thorns of memory to grab a rattlesnake and show us 
how it bit.
 I don't think the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber 
II thinks I have forgotten Dr. King. I think he knows 
how godlike a man becomes when he is only known 
for his legend. I think he knows that, if I couldn't ask 
for a bathroom in a church I don't go to because of 
a harrowing hallowing sixty years before, I'm sure I 
will sink in Dr. King's footsteps.
 I think the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II 
went home a#erwards and felt, as I did, the weight 
of ghosts. I learned later that he is my parents' age. 
To the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, like for 

everyone in that church, Dr. King was a hero, not a 
friend. He stayed on the roof with God.
 Perhaps that is the great tragedy of the legacy of 
Dr. King.


