Mitchell drove, which was good, Oliver joked, because with her driving, King might have been taken from the world a bit sooner.

Now living at Friendship Ter-race, family photographs fill the walls of Oliver’s small apartment. Prominent are two black-and-white pictures. One shows the Oliver and Mitchell families with King. In another, her son, Darrel Oliver, now a Homer real estate agent and food services manager at Land’s End Resort, then age 9, shakes King’s hand.

“He says it’s not many people who have the most important photo of his life taken at age 9,” Oliver said.

Oliver’s husband, Aaron “Oliver” Oliver, also met King. Somehow Oliver got out onto the tarmac and kept shaking King’s hand.

“My husband said he was the most Christ-like man he’d ever met,” Oliver said. “It was like he didn’t want to let go of him.”

Born in Dallas, Oliver was in high school in Lincolnton, Ga. when she learned about the lie of racism. Oliver was on the high school debate team and preparing for a debate on international affairs. She asked the local district attorney who was the smartest man in the county — and if she could talk to him. He told her the smartest man in the county was black — Professor Greer. Greer walked by Oliver’s grandmother’s home on his way to school, and the DA told her if she stopped him, he’d probably talk to her.

“There began my wonderful experience with the smartest human being I ever met,” Oliver said.

Through that experience she learned the lie of racism: people supposed to be inferior could be incredibly intelligent.

Photo by Michael Armstrong, Home Mary Eunice Oliver talks about meeting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

After marrying her husband and moving out to California and starting a family, Oliver’s civil rights activism picked up. Like King, church was the basis for her work. She was a member of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity. When they held meetings, the multiracial organization picked troubled spots.

In one such meeting in the early 1960s, the group stayed at the Heidelberg Hotel in Jackson, Miss. Under a federal law, facilities along the interstate highway system had to be integrated.

“It had been all white until we walked in the door,” she said.

Their group of blacks and whites together were met with scowls — except in the elevator, where the African American operators gave them huge grins. They got the same experience from the black kitchen workers, smiling away behind frowning white waitresses.

Oliver followed King’s path, and moved from civil rights activism to peace work. She said King saw that the Vietnam War was also racist.

“(King) was right. It was the black people who were the cannon fodder,” she said.

Oliver’s peace activism saw her spending a night in jail.

That came about after she refused to leave the U.S. Capitol Rotunda during a prayer demonstration in May 1972, a week after Mother’s Day. Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam, a group of ministers, nuns, priests and church members, sat down in the rotunda and prayed to end the Vietnam War.

“I’m here to celebrate Mother’s Day,” Oliver said in the rotunda. “I stand with the mothers down through history who took nonviolent, illegal action to save their sons from being killed.”

Oliver got booked, fingerprinted and had her mug shot taken. She wound up paying a $25 fine.

Oliver met King one more time after San Diego. She went to an Episcopal Church banquet in St. Louis, Mo., where King spoke. The menu was jail food — corn bread, beans and hot dogs — to honor King’s frequent jailings for his civil disobedience.

“He was magnificent. He had everybody in the palm of his hand,” Oliver said. “Oh my God, he had us mesmerized. Everybody was thrilled to hear him.”

After the banquet, Oliver shook King’s hand again. She said he recognized her right away and asked about her family.

Why celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day? Oliver was asked.

“He is the greatest ... American this country has ever produced, without question,” she said. “Only God knows how many lives he saved by preaching nonviolence.”