Martin Luther King Jr. Day Speech

By John Hickey
The power of forgiveness, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., was Charles W. Fox’s theme when the media consultant and educator spoke Jan.19 at West Virginia University at Parkersburg.

In the oral history of Fox’s family, the story has been passed down that Fox’s great-great-grandmother Mary, a slave owned by the family of George Washington, was a “brood woman” who hid her babies to prevent them from being sold, and who was whipped to death by her masters for refusing to work in the fields. After emancipation, the family history relates, one of Mary’s hidden babies, John Fox, who when grown had become involved in the Underground Railroad, returned as a free man to his mother’s former masters, reconciled with them, and formed a successful partnership with them, in an astonishing act of forgiveness and wisdom.

Charles Fox was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993 to head the U.S. Information Agency’s Worldnet Television and Film Service. At the time of Fox’s appointment, President Clinton stood with Fox, a great-great-grandson of a slave owned by the brother of George Washington, for a photograph in the White House. In the background hangs a painting of George Washington. That photograph, Fox said, like the story of his great-grandfather John Fox returning as a free man to partner with his former masters, crystallizes for him a sense of reconciliation and reunion, a sense of having come “full circle,” which, Fox says, has been a recurring theme in his life and in the history of his family.

The key to reconciliation is forgiveness, Fox says. He recounted moments from his own life as well as from the history of his family which, sometimes miraculously, brought home the lesson of forgiveness. “You must forgive,” he said, “to get off the wheel” of anger and estrangement which blocks you from reconciliation with yourself and from reunion with others.

Fox’s forthcoming Reunion: Dreams, Codes, and Memories, he promises, will tell the full story of his family’s history, which is entwined with the story of the African-American odyssey in America, as well as the story of his personal journeys in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, researching slavery and seeking “reconnection with ancestors” as a way a finding the reunion he seeks.

In observance of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Fox’s appearance was sponsored by WVUP’s Social Justice program. The President’s Office for Social Justice, at www.wvup.edu/president/office_of_social_justice.htm, says, “West Virginia University at Parkersburg is committed to fostering an educational system that values the development of human potential, cultural and ethnic diversity and understanding; that provides for the preparation of students for a full and meaningful participation in a changing world and that promotes equitable and fair treatment in every aspect of campus life and employment for all persons, regarding of race, ethnic background, gender, age, religion, veteran status or disability.”