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Fifty years is a long time. I realized that in 2013, when the Mississippi Annual Conference recognized 28 ministers for an act they performed here in 1963. These ministers, then young, issued a statement called “Born of Conviction,” written in response to the violent riots stirred by the admission of African-American James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962.

I was one of the four writers of the statement and among the 28 who signed it. Today, it’s difficult to imagine the statement could have been the bombshell that it was. That itself is witness to the dramatic difference between where we were then and where we are now.

After completing the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I came to Memphis, Tenn., as senior minister of Christ United Methodist Church in 1982. Our city is where King went to his death supporting striking sanitation workers. In 1991, our city

elected Willie Herenton as our first African-American mayor. We now have our second African-American mayor. The arc is long, but it bends toward justice.

I’m praying the bend will be more noticeable in the future. I left Memphis in 1994 and returned in 2004. Poverty and race are still our most critical issues. I believe public education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. A person’s ZIP code should not determine his or her opportunity for a good educational foundation.

Four years ago, our church established Cornerstone Prep as a private Christian school and located it in one of the neighborhoods where many underserved children live. Now a public charter school, Cornerstone Prep has grown from 60 students in our original private school to 625 and has responsibility for the first three grades of one of the most failing schools in the city. The school has had amazing results.

This movement on the part of our congregation is giving me great hope. Memphis is a very troubled city. Race and poverty flavor every relationship and every corporate decision. But I don’t know another city that has more bold and creative expressions of mission and ministry.

I believe it would be just like God to witness to the nation that if it can happen in Memphis, it could happen anywhere. Some of our city’s churches are at the forefront of bending the arc of justice, and I’m trusting that the arc will bend more dramatically during the next 50 years than it has in the past.

Now retired, the Rev. Maxie Dunnam is pastor emeritus of Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis. He began his pastoral service in Mississippi, served 10 years with The Upper Room and 10 years as president of Asbury Theological Seminary.