Charles Maudlin was 17-years-old when he met the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He said, at the time, that it wasn’t a big deal.

“It was just another day at the office for us,” he said.

In fact, he said he didn’t think too much about King at the time.

“When I was young we’d mock his speeches,” he laughed. “We were very cavalier.”

Since then, he’s had time to change his mind.

“As I was coming down (from Birmingham), I heard one of his speeches,” he said. “It really impressed me.”

Looking back, he said he realizes he was part of one of America’s greatest battles.

“He (King) won the greatest American war,” he said. “It was the war to save ourselves as Americans. It really helped liberate white southerners from themselves.”

Maudlin was the sixth man to cross the bridge into a nest of state troopers and sheriff’s deputies on Bloody Sunday.

Maudlin was the local student leader for SNCC during high school. He led marches before and after Bloody Sunday.

“We (area students) were the ones that really did the initial marching,” he said.

Because of his status as a local leader, he often sat in on meetings with King, John Lewis, Rev. James Bevel and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement.

While he was pleased with the national attention King brought to the Movement in Selma, he was busy to engage in hero worship.

“I lived in Brown Chapel,” he said.

Maudlin said demonstrations culminating in the Selma to Montgomery March lasted about three months, but it wasn’t until later that her realized how short a span of time it was.

“It seemed like it went on forever,” he said. “It was like being in a war zone.”

Ultimately, Maudlin said that King did impress him, but not with his greatness. Maudlin was taken with his humility.

“Dr. King was just a really easy-going, kind, down-to-earth person,” he said. “Nobody was awed by him. He had the ability to let you know that he and you were the same thing. He simply appreciated the best in those of us at that were being treated as the worst. He was our brother.”

Maudlin said that was probably King’s greatest strength, and what made him such a good leader.

As leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King managed to bring together national, regional and local leaders, religious and secular, and bind them to a common cause.

“He corralled all that energy and took it in one direction,” Maudlin said. “That’s almost impossible.”

King’s humility, Maudlin said, was part of his ability to do that.

“To know when to step in and when to butt out,” Maudlin said, “to stir the soup gently, to make sure that it didn’t overboil. He basically had to mediate those sources (the various leaders and groups) and to manage them.”

Sam Walker, of the Selma Voting Rights Museum, said he thinks King would have appreciated the way Maudlin remembers him, and the way his birthday is remembered.

“That’s one of the good things,” Walker said. “When you lift up Dr. King you lift up everybody that worked with him.”

King’s birthday, Walker said, should be a remembrance of that work and the need to continue it.

“We have to take that legacy one step forward,” he said, “and continue to serve. One problem is stopping violence. We want to apply Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violence.”

To achieve that goal, Walker is working with other leaders in the area, including Rev. James Bevel, to educate more people about King’s philosophy and how it can help the community.

“I would like to see the community make a general commitment to improve life for the least of us,” Walker said.

Today, in honor of King’s birthday, the National Voting Rights Museum/Black Belt Human Resource Center and the Selma Housing Authority will sponsor a program focusing on King’s philosophy.

The program will begin at 1 p.m. at the George Washington Carver Community Center. The Rev. James Bevel is scheduled to speak and the Dr. King Community Service award will be presented to Mrs. Sadie Moss.

Later today, the annual parade of voices holiday march will start at 3:30 p.m. at the First Baptist Church on the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street and Jeff Davis Avenue.

For more information call Walker at 334-418-0800.