LET FREEDOM RING: DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY 2024, by Mayor Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins, DMin, LHD
This month I pay personal tribute to the cloud of witnesses in the American Freedom Movement on whose shoulders I stand. I grew up during the age of Jim Crow, America’s version of Apartheid. I know what it means to live, stripped of opportunities, attempting to put pieces of shattered dreams back together again so that one can avoid an oppressive fate and live into a destiny of freedom and equality.
Especially on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I think of Dr. King and all those brave and unheralded souls who struggled alongside him to what Walter Fluker described as “expanding the moral vocabulary of American history and culture from parochially applied democratic principles to concrete proposals for inclusiveness, equity and action.” I’ve been particularly concerned about the erosion of policies and gains made by that movement by anti-democratic forces over the last several years. For that reason, I take the King Holiday seriously.
I was five years when Dr. King and the women and men of Montgomery, Alabama launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I recall my parents, who has escaped suffocating southern segregation just a decade earlier discussing that pivotal event around our kitchen table with both hope and trepidation inscribed on their faces. I was fourteen years old when King visited South Central Los Angeles just after the Watts Riot in 1965. He encouraged angry teenagers like me to hold fast to our dreams and not allow those dreams to die like a broken winged bird that cannot fly. I remember the day of King’s assassination, April 4,1968, more clearly that I do most of the days of the death of my own family members. It hit me hard. Very hard. Between 1980 and 1987 I served as Director of Peace with Justice Ministries for a chapter of the organization that Dr. King founded, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I came to meet and serve with such luminaries as Rev. James Lawson, Dorothy Cotton, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Dr. Mark Ridley-Thomas, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Dr. Cornell West, Mayor Andrew Young, Diane Nash, Dr. Maya Angelou and so many others. For me, King Day is more than just another federal holiday. It is an opportunity to set aside time to go deeper and wider into the legacy he left all of us.
Here are some of the things you may want to consider this coming King Day:
- Read some of Dr. King’s powerful but lesser-known speeches and writings. I would specifically recommend King’s 1964 Nobel Prize address and his Beyond Vietnam Speech:
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
- Attend the Perkiomen Valley School District” MLK Day of Service” on Monda, January 15, 7:30am – 1:30pm at the High School Library, Lobby and Cafeteria. Children and Adults Welcomed.
- Celebrate MLK Week 2023, and The Beloved Community Interfaith Celebration at Ursinus College. A full list of events is listed on the website at Ursinus College King Week Events 15th-21st
- Read about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedom Movement:
For adults
“King: A Life” by Jonathan Eig
“The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age” by Patrick Parr
“Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965” by David J. Garrow
“Let the Trumpet Sound” by Stephen B. Oates
“The Words of African-American Heroes” by Clara Villarosa
“And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK” by Henry L. Gates and Kevin M. Burke
For young kids:
“Let the Children March” by Monica Clark-Robinson; illustrated by Frank Morrison
“My Daddy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Martin Luther King III; illustrated by A.G Ford
For teens:
“March: Book One” by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell.
If you’re in the mood for a gripping novel, check out Oprah Book Club 2018 pick “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones.
On this the 40th Anniversary of the Federal King Holiday, I invite you to Let Freedom Ring! We can do so by taking King seriously.
