Courage Looks Different When the Capitol Is Uphill
This year for Black History Month, I am a little reflective.
One year, I took an impromptu trip to Montgomery, AL for MLK Day. There’s something about walking Montgomery that rearranges you.
You can read about the Civil Rights Movement. You can watch documentaries. You can quote sermons. But when you stand on Dexter Avenue and realize the Alabama State Capitol is literally up the hill from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, it changes the math.
Power wasn’t abstract. It was visible.
When King’s predecessor, Vernon Johns, preached boldly about racial terror and injustice, he wasn’t speaking from some hidden corner of town. The dome of the state government was within sightline. Law enforcement didn’t need GPS. They just needed to look downhill.
When someone burned a cross in front of that church, it wasn’t in secret. It wasn’t miles away. It was within walking distance of legislative power. That realization did something to me.
I have always considered Vernon Johns brave. That opinion has not changed. It cannot be changed. He was prophetic fire before Montgomery was ready for it. But what shifted for me was this: I found myself giving grace to the deacons who asked him to leave.
It’s easy to romanticize courage when you don’t have to live with the consequences.
Those deacons had:
Jobs tied to white employers
Families vulnerable to retaliation
A church building that could be burned
A community that would pay the price
Fear in that environment was not cowardice. It was survival calculus. And then came Martin Luther King Jr.
King did not arrive in Montgomery trying to set the South on fire. He was 26 — academic, measured, cautious. By today’s standard, he would have been eligible to remain on his parents’ health insurance. But when the envelope was handed to him — when the bus boycott erupted and leadership was thrust upon him — he stepped into it.
He did not go looking for confrontation. He responded to it.
Movements are rarely built by one personality type. They require:
– The prophetic disruptor (Johns)
– The cautious protector (the Dexter deacons)
– The reluctant leader who grows into the moment (King)
Montgomery held all three.
And walking those blocks — Capitol, church, Supreme Court — made that reality come alive for me.
Courage looks different when the Capitol is uphill.
Sometimes it looks like fire.
Sometimes it looks like fear.
Sometimes it looks like restraint until the moment demands otherwise.
Watching Just Mercy again recently, I felt the same pattern. Not everyone starts as a symbol. Some simply answer what’s handed to them.
Maybe the question isn’t, “Would I have been brave?”
Maybe the better question is:
When the envelope is handed to me… what will I do with it?
🔥 Don’t outsource remembrance. Learn it, walk it, speak it—so you don’t drift into comfort that costs other people their safety.
“We will not hide them from their descendants… we will tell the next generation…”
Psalm 78:4
