By Marie Mulvenna

Sister Ann Brotherton says she had long admired Martin Luther King, Jr., but when she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph almost 25 years ago she never dreamed she would one day be actively working to perpetuate his principles and theories of non-violence and social change.

Today, Sister Ann is Educational Programmer at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Social Change, temporarily located at the Atlanta University complex on Beckwith Street. Her job is multi-faceted but is educationally oriented, teaching Dr. King's principles and planning diversified educational programs to stress the meaning of non-violence to students.

Sister is a native of Augusta, Georgia and taught at St. Joseph's in Marietta, at Sacred Heart in Savannah and Aquinas High School in Augusta before heading for sociology studies at Fordham University in New York. She received her master's degree there and then headed for a teaching position Fontbonne College in St. Louis, MO. She returned to New York to pursue her studies for her doctorate in sociology at Fordham and teaching for a year at Manhattan Community College of the City of New York.

Returning to Atlanta last fall, Sister Ann said she wanted to be closer to home but also felt there were needs in Georgia and she was very interested in trying to meet the needs of her home state.

"The center here has projected educational programs and had actually begun them but had no full-time person to direct them." Sister now directs a vast array of educational efforts at the center and is delighted that her admiration for the late Dr. King and her expertise in education and sociology enable her to work toward his aims in such a constructive way.

Sister described education as a "basic prerequisite for action," explaining that Dr. King never involved himself in any action at all until he had carefully studied it, researched it and prayed over it. "Students are sometimes surprised to learn this, but it is a fact of his life."

She said Dr. King carefully studied a matter in great depth, with perception and with long-range vision. "Creative social change is absolutely necessary," Sister said, "but it must be informed and highly motivated."

Deeply devoted to education as a vehicle for social change, Sister Ann described her efforts with the "consortium" colleges and the continuing focus on non-violence. Several years ago, Sister explained, Coretta Scott King called a meeting of over 30 universities and colleges in the United States and an interuniversity consortium was formed with a view to work together and to develop programs and curricula related to the work of Dr. King as history as well as the whole area of non-violence, its philosophy and ideology.

Students in the consortium are able to take part in internship programs at the King center which includes an intense study of the philosophy of non-violence and social change, then actual work in a specific project in urban Atlanta. Students, Sister said, are presently working for a city councilman, one does survey field study work on desegregation and integration in the public school system and another is an assistant at the local Legal Aid Society.

"We seek students who are highly motivated to work for meaningful social change in society. After nine weeks in the field, the students return to the center for seminars, discussions and evaluation of their experiences. They are involved in projects strictly as volunteers, a point Sister Ann said was important because it gives them freedom, creativity and flexibility that might not be possible if they had to fill the traditional employee category.

Consortium colleges include Boston, Simmons, Boston University, Harvard, Emory, Antioch, Columbia, Michigan State and almost 30 top colleges and universities in America.

Sister related the consortium experience as another way of being innovative within the field of education. "We're quite excited about it and its response. Students are still finding the traditional classroom in some instances is quite dead." She said the consortium program helped fill the obvious gap between books and lectures and the real world outside. "We're trying to bridge that gap and help them understand their studies and what it's actually all about."

Sister Ann is equally intense about the Center's activities relating to non-violence. "People tend to think of non-violence as pacifist, non-protesting." She added emphatically, "Martin Luther King was not that way." She says Dr. King's belief on violence was not to return it with more violence but to seek a loving, creative way to bring about justice."

"While the non-violent person knows violence," Sister Ann said, "he does not and cannot tolerate violence in others or in society as a whole." She continues: "Therefore, non-violence brings us to the posture of seeking to change that which is violent energetically and creatively but also very lovingly."

"Martin Luther King's whole life and work was to correct violence to others and provide non-violent alternatives. It is not just a 'do nothingness' theory," Sister says, "but just the opposite."

Sister Ann said the United States had the "largest educational system in the world and at the same time a country where violence has reached epidemic proportions. We have to use the structure to help with the problem," she says.

The King Center has taken definite steps in the direction of non-violence and Sister has launched an Atlanta program for elementary level children, using workshops on non-violence to share with youngsters the meaning of creative response to a violent situation. The pilot programs in Atlanta have given center staffers high hopes for future such offerings.

In the future, interested groups and schools will be given orientation and planning sessions at the center for conducting programs in non-violence with the resources, planning and development of the center right behind their efforts.

Reflecting on her one-year affiliation with the center, Sister said she thoroughly enjoyed working with Coretta Scott King, whom she described as a fine and busy person. She said Mrs. King is the center's primary source of funding, realized from her cross-country speaking engagements. Sister said she found her position at the center most rewarding and the staff kind, warm and friendly. "They are all genuinely good people," she said. In addition to her duties at the center, Sister Ann also serves as part-time associate professor of sociology at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

"I'm most happy with my work and also that I was able to offer a background in social sciences to the efforts and aims of the King Center." She said that her educational thrust at the Center was one which stresses the importance of values.

"I long admired Martin Luther King and his philosophy of non-violence and education, but it is a delight to be an actual part of continuing his legacy in America."