MLK Vignettes: Bernice King shares bond with rabbi's daughter
John Diedrich
Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel formed what may have seemed an unlikely friendship in the civil rights era.
Their daughters have formed a similar bond today.
Bernice King, the youngest daughter of King, was 5 when her father was assassinated in 1968. She said everyone knows the serious King — but her memories are of a jokester who was always having fun around the house.
"He used to love to play with us," Bernice King said on a recent trip to Milwaukee. "We were like his refuge. He would come home from everything ... We had a great house."
She remember they once were playing basketball inside the house. Her mother, Coretta Scott King, worried plates would be broken — but she didn't stop it.
"It didn't upset her too much because she wanted him to have that freedom," she said.
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King spoke at a March 3 event at the Pabst Theatre along with Susannah Heschel, who said her father was inspired to become a religious scholar because of Martin Luther King Jr.
Abraham Joshua Heschel, was a friend of King's who marched at Selma. The two men had a deep impact on each other. Susannah Heschel, 61, says King made her "fall in love with the Bible." He also showed a 12-year-old a kindness she still recalls today.
It was 1968, the year King would be killed, and the men were at a meeting.
They were about to retire for a private conversation when Rabbi Heschel called King over to say hello to Susannah.
"Do you remember Susie?" Heschel asked him.
"Of course I remember Susie," King said as he came over.
Susannah said the gentleness that King showed, even at the end of a long day, inspires her to have patience today when she is frustrated with family or work.
"I try in those moments to turn my heart around," Heschel said. "I'm grateful for so many things — intellectually, spiritually, but even in these small ways with other human beings he showed us how to be a mensch, how to be a good person."