(1/17/00, 12 p.m. ET) - For Earth, Wind & Fire, Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy has special significance because they actually met him. Group member Maurice White recalls that momentous meeting.
"I used to work with Ramsey Lewis and, during a time when Ramsey once was sick for six weeks, I had an opportunity to work at Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, and we were the house band," White says. "We played there through all the rallies and stuff. And Martin Luther King used to come through there and speak all the time because he was heading up this particular thing with Jesse Jackson. And that's how I got to know Jesse real well. And I had the honor of shaking his hand. That lives with me today."
Dr. King was not just one of history's greatest civil-rights champions; he was also a noted scholar who was awarded honorary degrees from several prestigious colleges and universities around the world. White considers how we don't always focus on what an educated man Dr. King was. "They talk about his 'I Have A Dream' speech, but also, too, we must remember he was an educated man. He was a Ph.D; he was a scholar -- he went to college at fifteen years old. So, those are some of the things we don't focus on: his education, his process of getting to where he got to."
-- Lucy Tauss, New York
***Information source: Launch.Com