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Reverend Foster Hanley, O.Carm., was recently honored as the 2007 Martin Luther King Basketball Classic Honoree. Father Foster was ordained a Catholic priest in June of 1963. In August of that year, he was privileged to be with the thousands present to hear Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Father Foster said, “it was a fantastic experience of our oneness as human beings. There was so much compassion, love, and sharing.”
Father Foster was raised on the south side of Chicago and entered the Carmelite seminary at Niagara Falls, Ontario, at the beginning of high school. During a class in his junior year, a priest, Reverend Vincent O’Brien, mentioned that Foster’s neighborhood was the most racially bigoted neighborhood in Chicago. He denied this, but his eyes were opened. He witnessed racial violence the next summer, and decided there must be some other way to solve problems. Foster continued his education at Saint Bonaventure University where he majored in philosophy and sociology. He took four years of theology in Washington, DC, and was ordained at the time the Civil Rights Movement was beginning to flourish. After a chance meeting with Stokley Carmichael, he and a number of his fellow Carmelites joined S.N.C.C. (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). While getting a M.A. in sociology at Texas Southern University in Houston, he studied the non-violent philosophy of Gandhi and Dr. King.
Father Foster had the opportunity to be present when Dr. King spoke in Louisville, Chicago and Houston, which were places he had been assigned and where he was active in voter registration demonstrations for better housing and jobs, and in de-segregation of public schools. Father Foster Hanley began teaching in high schools in 1964. He has been teaching at Salpointe Catholic High School since September, 1986. Teaching mostly World History, he emphasizes to his students that if they are proud of themselves (not pompous) and of their ancestry, they have no reason to put anyone down and every reason to love and appreciate all of God’s children.
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