Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and government offices including the U.S. Postal Service were closed, but Greg Johnson didn’t want people to get the wrong idea.
“This is a day on, not a day off,” said Johnson, president of the Ansonia branch of the NAACP, who helped to organize a celebration of King’s birthday at noon Monday in the Greater Evangel Temple Church of God in Christ.
“We have to move forward, for every man, woman and child,” Johnson said before the start of the event.
Sometimes King Day is a bitter, freezing winter day, often with ice and snow, since it comes in the middle of January, the heart of winter, to mark when King was born, Jan. 15 1929.
But the event Monday was under sunny skies, in weather so warm a number of men wore no coats. About 100 people attended, including State Rep. Linda M. Gentile, D‑Ansonia/Derby, and State Rep. Themis Klarides, R‑Derby.
Ernest Vann, 56, of Ansonia, stood outside the church before the event began and talked about how far the United States has come since the day April 4, 1968 when King was slain.
He had worked tirelessly on the cause of civil rights since the 1950s and was one of the best known men in the world — at 35, the youngest to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
“It means a lot. The struggles we had to go through. The changes are slow in coming. It’s something that takes a long time,” Vann said. “Like getting the president in office. Everything takes time.”
Reviving the sunken economy is an example of something that remains to be done, for all people, he said.
“We have to stop this war and maybe jobs will open up for everybody,” he said.
Serina Mills of Ansonia, who also attended the event, said she spent the morning watching a movie that told the story of a white woman whose husband left her for helping black people during the segregation times. She was not sure of the title of the film.
“Her husband left her because she was doing that,” Mills said.
The thing to remember is that people really are not divided by race, implied one of the ministers who spoke.
“There is only one race in the world and it’s not black or white. It’s the human race. If you cut us all of us bleed the same,” said Elder Richard Saunders, pastor of the Star of Bethlehem Church.
The ceremony featured some uplifting music, including one song with the lyrics, “nobody told me the road would be easy, but I don’t think He’s brought me this far to leave me.”
There were somber moments too, like when Elder Edward Barnes warned the crowd that people shouldn’t make King’s dream into a nightmare.
“We don’t want the ‘n’ word used as an introduction to ‘how are you doing?,’” Barnes said, referring to how some young people casually use the ‘n’ word when talking about themselves. “We don’t want young people wearing hoodies and shooting each other with Uzis.”
King would have been 81 years old.
