6 minute read
Celebrating the Life of Mrs. Muriel Durley and Other Icons
By Maynard Eaton, Managing Editor
Sadly, we have already lost a long list of luminaries in 2021. They read like a Who’s Who of revered African American activists, athletes, and actors. They include legends like MLB home run king, Hank Aaron; former heavyweight boxing titleholder, Leon Spinks; middleweight champ Marvelous Marvin Hagler; NBA Hall of Famer, Elgin Baylor; NFL player and broadcaster Irv Cross, Hall of Fame Temple basketball coach John Chaney; actress Cicely Tyson, actor Douglas Turner Ward, jazz vocalist/pianist Freddie Cole, The Supremes singer Mary Wilson, Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings, Atlanta Voice editor-in-chief Marshall Latimore; Atlanta Student Movement founder Lonnie King, and Vernon Jordon, a top-flight businessman, civil rights leader and close advisor to President Bill Clinton, among others.
Those are all prominent Black Lives That Mattered! And, while she may not have been a nationally known figure akin to those previously mentioned, Muriel West Durley was an authentic heroine, who for 53 years, partnered with renowned minister, civil rights activist, and environmental justice movement leader Rev. Dr. Gerald Durley. Her life mattered to him and many others. The couple were also longtime friends, collaborators and confidantes to SCLC President Dr. Charles Steele and his wife Cathelean. Out of a personal fondness and professional respect for them both, Dr. Steele attended the January 15th funeral.
“I will always remember her beautiful smile,” Dr. Steele tells me about Muriel Durley during a lull in her memorial service. “Yes, they were a civil rights family. We marched many a march together. He was always there. I have to respect the fact that when you come to Atlanta, there are so many leaders, they’re so many activists, and so many people trying to do God’s work, but they chose to support me regardless of all the other leaders.” “Today is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”, observed Rev. Timothy McDonald, a 33-year long friend, and former Atlanta Concerned Black Clergy President. “We can live, even in death. Character is who you are when ain’t nobody watching; that’s Muriel Durley. We can learn so much from her life, and we can learn even more from her death.”
In concert with her husband, Muriel Durley, proved to be a savvy political powerbroker in Atlanta and the segregated South during her captivating church and community career. That’s why Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and newly elected Georgia Senator Rev. Raphael Warnock applauded her impactful life and contributions in video tributes. They were cognizant that their comments would be resonant with their constituents and national political/human rights leaders because of Muriel’s mystique, muscle and moxie. “She always carried herself with such dignity and such grace,” opined Mayor Bottoms. “And, I always admired not just her outward beauty, but most importantly her inner beauty.”
“When we think about the ministry of this couple across the years and decades in this city and across the country we are inspired” added Sen Warnock, the pastor of MLK’s famous Ebenezer Baptist Church. “We bless the memory of Sister Muriel – a woman of God who loves the church – cultured, educated and polished in every way. She was a friend of the poor and disposed. Yet she was at home among those who possessed power and influence. She never lost the common touch.”
“Muriel was regal, elegant, refined and yet down to earth”, eloquently added Imam Plemon El-Amin, Imam Emeritus of the Atlanta Masjid Al-Islam from the Providence Missionary Church pulpit. For 46 years his family was a part of her church family. Since 2002, Imam El-Amin and Dr. Durley have been on 16 world pilgrimages to 11 different countries together.
“She had a dignified common touch. She was caring, compassionate, cool, calm and collected,” El-Amin continued. “And that’s exactly what she needed to be to settle and tame the self-proclaimed, dynamic, devasting, dangerous, darling [Dr. Durley] from Denver. She tamed him, she smoothed him out for 53 years.”
Between the 25 years that Dr. Durley was pastor at Providence he officiated and presided over 22 funerals of Imam El-Amin’s family members.
“And every time he did them, Muriel was with him,” he reveals. “He brought his prayers and his spirit, but she brought that comforting hugs and tears and peaceful presence of support, sympathy and sincerity. She was always calm, caring, listening, and relating with such sweet assurance that made you know that things would be alright. She was there for my family, and many of your families. She was even more so there for her husband – the preacher, the pastor, the social justice activist. She was the source of comforting spirit that he always relied on.”
Muriel Durley, an educator, was repeatedly couched and complimented as a quintessential First Lady of an historic and major African American church in the heart of Atlanta’s internationally influential southside. In his emotional eulogy entitled, A Love Letter to the Love of My Life, Dr Durley emphasized that his late wife was the epitome of a wife, partner, and exceptional First Lady.
“One of the first roles in the church is the First Lady because she’s always under a spiritual microscope. Muriel was the epitome of what a First Lady is, but she said I just want to be a Christian who loves people. She wrote the book on what it meant to be a First Lady – a lady of class, a woman of distinction, a person of elegance.”
Dr. Durley recalled his third sermon at Providence, “where I had just butchered the congregation with a horrible sermon”. Heading home, he asked his wife how she thought the Sunday service was. “The choir was great, and I’ve never seen better announcements in my life,” she cleverly replied. “She didn’t back up. She was always the one that would say ‘this is it’ but she wouldn’t beat you over the head with it. I do this in love,” she would say. She’d never put you down, she was always encouraging.”
What marveled Dr. Durley, and countless others ostensibly, was Muriel’s uncanny and unflinching wisdom. “Your soft, penetrating wisdom is who you were and gave us all hope and encouragement to be the best that we can be,” he eulogized and exalted. “She was peaceful and pleasant. My love you are the tree of life. Muriel personified wisdom.”
In a riveting pulpit ode to Muriel Durley – and ostensibly to the many others we’ve loved and lost this year - Hank Stewart, a popular poet, author, activist and SCLC Convention motivational speaker, soulfully repurposed his IT poem.
“She had it. When she walked into the room, there was something very special about her; something radiant. You see, it is confidant; it is an air. It knows how to handle adversity. It takes things in stride. It cannot be inherited…. Simply because your mother had it doesn’t mean it will embrace you. It knows when to speak, and it knows when not to say a word. It is like a box of chocolate; you see it is preferred. You see when she smiles, you see it. When she laughs you hear it, when she tells you something, you believe it. When she hurts you feel it? Every man wants to love it. He wants to hold it. He wants to cherish it. Every man knows his life is incomplete without it.”
REST IN PEACE, REST IN POWER Muriel Durley and our other African American loves and legends who have now gone on to Glory! THANK YOU!
