Jan 19, 2015 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – The words of Dr. Charles DiSalvo, guest speaker Monday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day convocation at Waynesburg University, called for sacrifice and self-suffering as a means of combatting political violence and a way to “redeem society” and “one’s soul.” DiSalvo said King and Indian independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi, whose teachings greatly influenced King, understood this.

DiSalvo’s words resonated in Roberts Chapel at a time when activists are reacting in violent and nonviolent ways across the United States for myriad reasons, many tied to race relations.

He asked those gathered to consider how blacks and whites can contribute to the issues surrounding race relations in the United States.

“What sacrificing and what self-suffering are we willing to undergo?” DiSalvo asked. “We all know of broken relationships in society, in the family, in the neighborhood, the workplace and in our schools.”

DiSalvo asked the audience to consider what needs to be done to bring good relations, unity and love to “the family, the neighborhood, the workplace and to the college.”

DiSalvo spoke of the ultimate sacrifices paid by King, Gandhi and Archbishop Oscar Romero, men who shared a vision of a world united by peace, assassinated even as they walked their talk.

DiSalvo, a professor of law at West Virginia University who teaches one of the few law school courses in the United States on civil disobedience, has written extensively about Gandhi.

Gandhi was felled by a bullet in 1938, prior to a prayer meeting. Thirty years later, King, who believed in Gandhi’s methods of peaceful solutions to violence, was also a victim of gunfire.

Finally, DiSalvo told the somewhat lesser known story of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot through the heart while celebrating Mass in 1980.

Romero spoke out against the human rights record of the Salvadorian government on poverty and social injustice and the death squads sent to detain, torture and kill any who spoke out, DiSalvo said.

Romero held firm to his beliefs, even as a war was declared on his fellow priests, several of which were murdered, DiSalvo said.

From one generation to the next, there are those like King, Gandhi and Romero who struggle to bring about redemption through peace, love and their own spiritual beliefs. DiSalvo said the struggle is ongoing to redeem America.

“So, too, is the struggle to redeem our own souls,” he told those gathered to remember King.