Celebrating Black History Month: Courageous Love In The Public Square

Now that the remembrance of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 2026 holiday is over and the celebration for Black History Month is here, I’d like to take a moment to reflect: What does love really look like when fear fills our headlines and racist injustice influences our systems?

Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day last month, we remembered not just a dreamer, but a dedicated justice advocate—someone who organized, negotiated, marched, prayed, and sacrificed for the vision of the Beloved Community. Dr. King showed us that peace isn’t just the absence of tension; it’s the presence of justice. February’s Black History Month also carries that truth with many stories of struggle and progress by Black people against incredible odds. That truth continues to guide us today.

As a United Methodist committed to our church’s global witness—present at the United Nations and civil society—I have learned that faith must be public, not private; embodied in policy and practice, not just proclaimed in worship.

Our Social Principles urge us to honor every person, dismantle racism, build equitable economies, steward creation, reject violence, and uphold dignity across borders and identities. This is a faithful expression of a living faith that seeks justice and peace.

I hold this conviction personally. In 1996, I received the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award from Drew University. That recognition did not commemorate an accomplishment so much as it compelled a commitment: to hold together conscience, compassion, and courage.

• Conscience names what is wrong without fear or favor
• Compassion centers on those most harmed, refusing to treat them as statistics
• Courage risks comfort and reputation until policies change and lives are protected

Wherever we stand—in sanctuaries, city halls, or international forums—the world needs people willing to bring moral imagination to negotiations, spiritual stamina to long campaigns, and a theology robust enough to balance sorrow and hope.

We live in a world with a surplus of fear and a deficit of hope. MLK Day and Black History Month should therefore be less about commemoration and more about formation:

• Habits of truth-telling that resist sanitized narratives and polite silence.
• Discipline of nonviolence—not only in protest but in politics, speech, budgets, and intent.
• Global neighborliness that recognizes we are bound together in networks of mutuality: your health linked to mine, your freedom tied to mine, your future interwoven with mine.

Here are actions we must continue in remembrance of Dr King’s long social justice legacy: and continue to celebrate the depth of Black History that is American history.

• Churches turning liturgy into legislation and prayer into policy.
• Congregations joining coalitions for racial equity, housing justice, healthcare access, and creation care.
• Clergy and laity practicing dialogue across differences, refusing to caricature or compromise the vulnerable.
• People of faith following the money, the data, and the stories until accountability becomes the norm.

Dr. King warned against the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Our United Methodist Social Principles challenge the myth that private benevolence can replace public justice. UMC Social Principles emphasize that love must be institutionalized in budgets, laws, schools, and systems that repair harm.

So, I recommit—and invite you to join me—in truth without cynicism, hope without naïveté, courage without bravado, and love without limits. The Beloved Community is not a deferred utopia; it is a horizon we approach through daily choices—organizing, educating, advocating, and praying.

For this past MLK Day and 2026 Black History Month, may our lives reflect former Harvard University Professor Cornel West’s reminder that “justice is what love looks like in public,” and, by grace, we will live it.