(The following story originally appeared in the 01/16/07 issue of The Richmond Register. It has been reprinted, with permission, here, and has not been altered in any way.)

Journey to Forgiveness
Speaker recalls fatherŐs murder

By Bryan Marshall
Register News Writer
The Richmond Register
January 16, 2007

BEREA - Carl Ray's long "Journey to Forgiveness" began in 1962 when his father was brutally murdered by a white supremacist in Choctaw County, Ala.

The stand-up comedian and former engineer recounted the event and how he learned to forgive Monday during a Martin Luther King Jr. convocation at Berea College.

"I made the mistake of saying 'yes' and 'no' to a white man when he questioned me instead of saying 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.' In 1962, that was disrespectful, so he beat me up," Ray recalled about the day he was preparing to leave home for the then-Tuskegee Institute.

"An hour later, he came to my house and told my father that I was going to have to leave because I didn't know how to talk to white people," he said. "The next thing I know, he pulled out a gun and struck my father across the forehead. I hit him, and we tumbled off the porch. He cocked the gun and shot my father eight times in the chest, killing him."

After witnessing his father's death at 18, Ray said he experienced the best day in his life more than two decades later.

"The greatest day in my life was 22 years later when I forgave the man who killed my father," he said. "When you talk about forgiveness, it is fantastic. It's not about somebody who did something to you. It's about your release and your freedom."

Ray eventually created a one-man play depicting his father's tragic death, which he also presented to Berea College students.

While driving a taxi in Los Angeles in order to make it as a comedian, Ray met a "weird, white guy from Canada" who urged him several times to embrace forgiveness.

"(The Canadian) said, 'I'm going to make a deal with you. You don't even have to mean it, but if you just say the words that you forgive (your father's killer,) then I will leave you alone,'" he said.

Willing to do anything to get the persistent cab rider to leave him alone, Ray obliged.

"I don't know where it came from, but when I said (that I forgave him,) it was like I had been moved from one planet to another," he said. "I couldn't feel nothing. Everything was gone - anger and fear. I was on cloud nine."

"It's not about forgetting," Ray said to the students. "It's about your freedom. It's about you living longer through the process of forgiveness. It doesn't mean things are going to change overnight. Every day you pick up the newspaper, you're going to see something that you may not like. It's how you let that affect you versus letting it slide off your back."

Ray said he was in the process of trying to forgive the country for a lot of things in order to move forward.

"I am in the process of forgiving America for the death of Martin Luther King, our leader," he said. "We have not had a leader like that since that time. I have to forgive America for all of the lynchings that happened. I forgive America for Jim Crowe. I think if we as a group of people understand this forgiveness, then we will begin to move up as a people."

Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.

© 2007 Richmond Register