As President Obama was taking the oath of office for the second time and delivering his inaugural address, about 75 people filled Ansonia’s Macedonia Baptist Church to remember one of the men who blazed the trail.
The Valley chapter of the NAACP hosted a celebration to mark Martin Luther King Day with an event that featured speakers who spoke of King’s legacy, his work, and the work yet to be done to make his dream a reality.
Greg Johnson, the president of the Ansonia NAACP, said the event took on added significance because it coincided with the president’s second swearing-in.
“How far we’ve come,” Johnson said, referring to the inauguration. “(But) we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”
Nowhere is that more clear, Johnson said, that Connecticut, where his message of non-violence is needed more than ever.
“We continue the legacy of the work of Dr. King and preach non-violence, especially in the wake of all the nonsense that happened in Newtown,” Johnson said.
In addition to prayers, music, and a rendition of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Brian Perkins, the former president of the New Haven Board of Education, recited King’s “Mountaintop” speech, which he delivered in Memphis, Tenn. the day before his assassination.
“Dr. King had been comforted and known that he wouldn’t be around, and the time had come for him to prepare the people who had been following him and marching alongside him to keep going,” Perkins said while introducing the speech. “It felt like the world was coming to an end. Everyone they had put their faith in had lost their lives.”
Perkins’ oratory mimicked King’s grandiose, booming style, with the message that, though he might not have lived to see all of his dreams become a reality, he believed that one day they would, even if he wasn’t there to see it.
“I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land,” Perkins said, quoting King. “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
Click the play button on the video above to see the entire speech.
Afterward, Shamir Hughes, an eighth-grader at Ansonia Middle School, read an essay he wrote urging those gathered in the same way that King did.
“No matter how many community centers or after school programs are closed down, we all have a kitchen table that a few of us can meet at a few times a week,” the 13-year-old Hughes said. “If Dr. King took the time to fight and care about people he didn’t even know, why can’t I offer extra help to my fellow neighbors that I know are having a hard time?”
Click the play button below to see Hughes read his essay.
Hughes closed his remarks by noting that, though injustice and inequality still exist in the world, remembering King’s work
“God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers,” he said. “Thank you, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I too shall overcome.”
It was a message also touched on by Rev. Alfred Smith during the celebration’s keynote address.
He quoted Amos 5:24, “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream,” at the beginning of his remarks.
Smith said that he was just 13 years old when King was killed. He didn’t realize the full importance of King’s message then, but was lucky enough to interview civil rights legend Rosa Parks when he worked for a radio station in Buffalo, N.Y.
Talking with Parks helped him realize how important not only King was, but those, like Parks, who came before him.
King was “sent by God to be a modern-day Moses for his people,” Smith said.
A slideshow of pictures from the event is posted below.