April 7th, 1968: “You can’t have it here,” the man snapped at my father as we walked toward his study at the church on Sunday morning. “This is our church, and you cannot have it here. This ain’t your church, Vernon, this is our church. And I am telling you right now, you ain’t having no Martin Luther King service in our church…You can’t have a church full of niggers in here. This is our church.”
“The last time I checked, it was God’s church,” my father replied…