Several have asked if we could make the presentation given by Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo available to a wider audience. Here is the sermon she delivered on Sunday, January 19, 2025.
From Birmingham to Bethesda: The 1963 letter from A Birmingham Jail Speech – Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
Rev. Park, thank you for this amazing opportunity to share our respect and admiration for the life and work of God’s saint, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I bring greetings from Macedonia Baptist Church, a small-framed sanctuary built by love that sits on a hill overlooking River Road in Bethesda that continues to bear witness to the power of our God: a God of justice. This faith energizes us every day to fight for those who can no longer fight for themselves and to tell the story of a beleaguered African community, kidnapped from a highly evolved civilization and brought to River Road and held under the most barbaric conditions ,imaginable. We honor our brave warrior ancestors who continue to inspire us.
I would like to acknowledge my daughter, Folasade and the members of BACC who are here to support me and fellowship with you. We also have an assignment for you, a petition that we would like for you to sign but I will talk about that a bit later.
Let us pray..
O God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, God who knew us when hope was yet unborn, we thank you for the life of your servant, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rev. Walter Fauntroy, a close friend of Dr. King told us that he believes before Dr. King’s body touched the ground, he was shouting hallelujah in glory! We ask you to bless this congregation and to seal our love of justice in your good works. Amen.
Rev. Park, this is the second year that you have asked Macedonia Baptist Church to speak at your Martin Luther King, Jr. service. Last year, my husband, Rev. Dr. Segun Adebayo had the honor of addressing this congregation. Macedonia will turn 105 years old this year under my husband’s leadership and we plan to be around for a very long time.
We have participated in a number of programs together, an educational event in your friendship hall and a vigil in front of this beautiful church, bearing witness to our neighbors walking or in cars about the desecration of Moses African Cemetery. We deeply thank you and look forward to deepening our witness with you.
This week has been one of reflection and soul searching as I contemplated and re-read numerous times, Dr. King’s brilliant and equally vulnerable 1963 essay entitled:
‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail.’ I was particularly interested in understanding how much has really changed in 62 years from 1963 to 2025. Not the cosmetic changes, superficial veneer that we often find comfort in mistaking for reality but real structural change in what my friend, Chairman Omali Yeshitela, calls the mode of production or white supremacy. The structure that predicably demanded Dr. King’s life as a sacrifice on its altar.
The title of my sermon today is the “Long March to Freedom: From Birmingham to Bethesda” and the two Bible verses that inspired me are: Micah 6: 8
O people, the Lord has told you what is good.
And this is what he requires of you;
To do what is right to love mercy, and
To walk humbly with your God.” And
John 20: 11-13 NLT
Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped
And looked in. 12. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying.
“Dear woman, why are you crying? The angels asked her.
“Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied,
“and I don’t know where they have put him.”
The two verses reveal the obligation of pursuing justice and the pain of looking for your loved ones who have been taken.
I would like to explore with you the relationship between the struggle that occurred in Birmingham in 1963 (the pursuit of justice) and what is occurring in Bethesda at Moses Cemetery today (the theft of ancestral remains.)
Before I began, a sidebar. I mused about, the description of how Dr. King described the human family that we are all “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” I wondered how I might be tied to Dr. King: these are my two thoughts:
- When I was applying for graduate studies at MIT I approached Congressman John Conyers. As my Mom and I walked into the office I saw a woman sitting behind the desk who looked very much like Rosa Parks. I asked my mother and she said – go ask her. So, I tipped toed carefully up to this woman and said, by any chance are you Rosa Parks?! She looked up and said – why yes, I am! In her deep southern accent. I went berserk – I think I terrified her. I started praising her and thanking her for her courage – well you have the idea. So, I’m connected to Dr. King through my short interaction with Rosa Parks.
Dr. King is right, we are all connected in an inescapable network of mutuality.
Moses African Cemetery is about five minutes from here. Undoubtedly, it is the largest mass grave of Black people in the US. The Maryland Supreme Court recently declared…. That it is currently being desecrated and defiled with permission from Montgomery County. Shamefully and perhaps, characteristically, not a single politician has the courage or commitment to truth to speak out against this atrocity. So BACC ask you to sign a petition to Congressman Jamie Raskin demanding that he condemn the desecration of Moses Cemetery occurring in his district.
The churches in our area, with the exception of this one, have remained impeccably silent and unmoved throughout these tragedies. The same churches that Dr. King spoke about in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
For the record, what happened here and what is presently happening here in Bethesda on River Road is genocide. Dr. King was often criticized for being direct and to the point. I will not divert today from his example. [or I will honor his guidance]
The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as:
- “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was vigilantes, like the KKK who were engaged in desecrating African graves. Today, its multi-national corporations involved in this criminal and immoral behavior.
For more than two centuries the descendants on River Road labored in this County under terror; they planted and harvested tobacco, creating wealth for the founding families of Bethesda; they built the homes of those who hated them, they humiliated African women who nurtured their children. Despite suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation they continued to thrive and develop on River Road.
In the 1950s, the KKK marched up and down River Road terrorizing the River Road maroon community. Harvey Matthews Sr. family lived where the current Whole Foods is located. The Klan in collusion with Montgomery County officials, the Montgomery County police department and developers targeted Mr. Matthews’ home. Mr. Matthews refused to give up his hard-earned land. One evening, around 3am – the Klan came and broke down their door. They pulled Mr. Matthews out of his home, beat him, in front of his family with deadly intent. Harvey Jr. recalls his mother begging the Klan to not kill her husband.
They finally stopped beating him after issuing a warning – sign over your land. Mr. Matthews still refused. The Klan kept their promise, escalating the terror, they kidnapped Mr. Matthews and took him to an undisclosed location. We don’t know what happened this time but according to Harvey Matthews Jr., this time, his father signed his X on the paper. Within weeks, the Klan forcibly removed the Matthews family from their land.
So the next time you shop at Whole Foods on River Road – remember the Matthews family. The attempted murder occurred on the steps on Whole Foods. And, I would like for Mr. Harvey Matthews, Jr. to stand and receive our thanks for exposing a history that Montgomery County has tried to cover-up.
And you didn’t know this history. I lived in Bethesda for 40 years, I didn’t know this history. Not because we want to hide from the ugly truth of how Bethesda became predominately white but because those in power made a decision that they would erase this history and transfer the wealth of Mr. Matthews and the River Road community to the white community. Later this land would be sold for over $30 million dollars and made into a shopping mall. The Matthews family would suffer from trauma and start over from scratch with no present wealth or hope of passing on intergenerational wealth.
In 1940, one in eight Montgomery County residents was Black, in 1950, one in fourteen residents was Black, and by 1960, one in thirty residents was Black. By the early 1960’s every Black family on River Road had been terrorized out of their homes and their land had been stolen.
You didn’t learn about this at Whitman, or Bethesda Chevy Chase High School or Harvard or Yale but the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition will never stop telling this story until justice is achieved. In fact, we have written 3 books on the River Road community. The disappearing of the Black Bethesda community and the transfer of wealth to white families was intentional and surgically executed.
But the story is not over, after the County, the KKK and developers disappeared the African community they decided to desecrate/destroy the cemetery, Moses Cemetery – it was the material evidence of a genocide – a crime against humanity. The cemetery held the power of memory, it was material evidence, a symbol of a community that was violently disappeared. Our position is that this ground must be commemorated as an international site of genocide, a museum, sacred space not a self-storage bin. We owe this to ourselves and future generations.
But despite the lies and intentional cover-up of material evidence, one institution survived in clear sight that helped us connect the research dots – the Macedonia Baptist Church.
And, this is where we come to John 20: 11-13 NLT
Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped
And looked in. 12. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying.
“Dear woman, why are you crying? The angels asked her.
“Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
Our ancestors were taken away and we asked countless times, where have you taken our loved ones? We were told, We don’t know? Who is asking? the County Executive told us that the remains we were asking about were pig and chicken bones. But we kept asking, where have you taken them? They knew and refused to respect our humanity. What do you think Dr. King would have done?
And, no one told you about the bones, the remains of our ancestors – the material evidence of the kidnapping and murders that took place on River Road? There were 4 large death camps called Plantations on River Road owned by the Counselman, Loughborough, Posey and Shoemaker families. Children were murdered through work regimes that were so extreme and vile that 60% would die before the age of 10 years old. In fact, if you lived to be 10 years old you had lived half of your lifetime. That was genocide.
The County has covered up this information. And it gets worse, after 1807, when the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade officially ended, a domestic breeding industry started where children and young girls were forced to endure sexual violence and pregnancies. 60% of these children and young girls would bleed to death during childbirth. Rape was a death sentence. Their exhausted and sweet bodies would be thrown into a swamp and one of the largest mass graves on River Road that we now call Moses African Cemetery.
It is our belief that the remains of these children and young adults were excavated during the ongoing building of the Self-storage unit on River Road. We saw the tombstones, coffin lids and ceremonial bottles come out of the earth. Hundreds of bones were unearthed and trafficked to a warehouse in Virginia. We wrote to politicians who ignored us in deference to developers.
The only church that has offered comfort and prayers and has stood with us, with protest signs – is the one that I stand in today.
Dr. King, faced the same situation in Birmingham, Alabama. King would argue that civil society had a history of this kind of behavior but he expected more from the white church. The white church in Birmingham turned their faces away from the ugliness and violence of white supremacy. It was more concerned about King’s presence exposing the atrocities of murder and oppression than in the murder and oppression of Black people. They urged him to return to Georgia.
His answer to this hypocrisy was painfully heartfelt: He wrote: “ I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership. In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause… I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise?”
At the end of his letter, King’s footing is anchored and this is where the 20th century King movement and 21st century BACC come together– our unrelenting believe that regardless of whether one group or organizations support our demands for justice – we are unstoppable and justice will prevail. That’s why in August we received a favorable decision by the MD Supreme Court – because we are unstoppable and we repeatedly fill the streets with people who are determined to speak out against desecration.
Although King and those in BACC hope that politicians and the church will line-up on the side of justice, we are determined, as General Harriet Tubman commended us – to keep going – regardless of whether our friends are with us or not. Dr. King opined: I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future.
If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. This is what it means to be in an unstoppable courageous justice-directed movement. Our faith is rooted in God and our community.
Before you leave we hope you will sign the BACC petition to Congressman Jamie Raskin asking him to denounce desecration. Moses Cemetery is located in his district. He has refused in the past but we are not deterred. We ask you to support BACC and our continuation of Dr. King’s work.
I end this presentation with the words of Dr. King:
“ ….Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
And, let the Church say “Amen!”
Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, Ph.D is an American former senior policy analyst for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She founded the No FEAR Institute, which focuses on educating the public about discrimination within the federal sector. Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo received her A.B. degree from Barnard College/Columbia University and her doctorate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Originally from Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Maryland 30 years ago to assume a professorial position at the American University. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo is the author of the Pulitzer-nominated book, NO FEAR: A Whistleblower’s Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA.