Air Date: Week of January 16, 2026

Valerie Elaine Pettis, artist and wife of Mark Seth Lender, draws the grizzly spotted in Yellowstone National Park. (Photo: © Valerie Elaine Pettis)

The nonviolent resistance preached by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was far from passive. It required peaceful confrontation and fierce courage to protect Black Americans from the constant threat of racist violence. Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence, Mark Seth Lender sent us this essay about an encounter in Yellowstone National Park years back that reminded him of a story he heard from one of Dr. King’s defenders.

Transcript

DOERING: As the US honors the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who paid the ultimate price for advancing civil rights in this country, we remember that the nonviolent resistance he preached was far from passive. It required peaceful confrontation and fierce courage to protect Black Americans from the constant threat of racist violence.

Explorer-in-Residence, Mark Seth Lender sent us this essay about a moment in Yellowstone National Park years back that reminded him of a story he heard from one of Dr. King’s defenders.

Non Violence
Grizzly Bear, Yellowstone National Park
Homo Sapiens, Bogalusa, Louisiana

© 2026 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

From the top of the hill the land falls off into a gulley where water in a thin cold stream cuts through, and on the other side a gradual grassy rise. There at the high point a young grizzly is feeding. It is impossible to tell what he is feeding on because he is standing on it, all fours. Newly awake from a winter of forty, fifty below for months he’s been feeding on himself. Now it is someone else’s turn. To be fed upon. He is not about to lose possession of this first meal. He rips and tears and every few seconds when he raises his head to swallow, he scowls. Brow furrowed, eyes screwed tight. Jaws working once twice. He does not need any more than this to make his point: I want to rip your head off. The subtext being, Try to take what is mine, from me, and I will.

There is more to the message than that. And it reminds me of something.

I met Charles Sims a couple of times in the late 1960’s. He was the president of the Bogalusa Deacons for Defense and Justice and one of its founders. Low to the ground, broad chested, intense; everything about him said: not to be messed with. I liked him very much. He liked me too or he wouldn’t have bothered with me. Still, it wasn’t until the second time we saw each other that he opened up a little. This is the story he told me.

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Martin Luther King was on his way to Mississippi by way of Bogalusa, planning to spend the night. The Deacons had found a house for him, on the edge of town because they did not want anyone to know he was there. The Ku Klux Klan found out, anyway. And Charlie Sims found out about that. When the Klan came around the corner that same evening they saw a line of black men, seven or eight, no more than that, very calm, standing in front of the porch between them and Dr. King and each of them had a shotgun in the crook of his arm. The mob became very, very quiet, Charlie said, and they kind of, looked at their feet, and went back the way they came.

Charles Sims and the Bogalusa Deacons for Defense and Justice saved the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.’s life that night. And not for the last time.

Nonviolence as practiced by Charlie Sims and by grizzly bears is violence held back, an invisible cordon, a boundary written on the air that must not be crossed.

DOERING: That’s Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence, Mark Seth Lender.

 

Links

Visit Mark Seth Lender’s website.