The King sermon that brought down the Berlin Wall

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Dr. Charles Steele met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a teenager

In Detroit

The national president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference told Innovation&Equity21 on the birthday of Dr. King that his cousin brought him to Cobo Arena and took him to the front of the hall specifically to meet the SCLC founder. "He said, 'This is my cousin from Tuscaloosa. One day he's going to have your job."

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Spiritual Bombshell

The former Alabama senator opened Innovation&Equity21 on Jan. 15 with a number of revelations. The most astounding was his recounting of the 25th anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, which many credit to an American military buildup in the 1980s.
"I was there at a long table with former U.S.S.R. President MIkhail Gorbachev at one end and me at the other," recalled Steele. "He came up to me afterwards and it was Dr. King who caused him to take down the wall."
Direct from the source
"What are you telling me, President Gorbachev," I responded.
"He told me he heard a sermon by Dr. King in 1964 in which he quoted Isaiah: "No man-made wall can keep God from his people."
"President Gorbachev, were you there?"
"No, he said, but I was assigned to monitor all his speeches because I was in the KGB."
"When I decided to bring down the wall, it was because I remembered that speech."
Stunning testimony
Dr. Steele was serving in his third term as an Alabama state senator when he resigned in 2004 to take the post as national president of SCLC. "People said, are you crazy giving up a safe Senate seat? But I had to come save SCLC. ...When I first came, I would sleep in my car because I couldn't afford a hotel room. The valets would wake me up at 7 a.m. every day..Now, we've been there for 16 years.. God is good!
Saving SCLC by sleeping in his car