King’s holiday, daughter calls for bolder actions than words

ATLANTA (AP) — America has given Martin Luther King Jr. a federal holiday for nearly 40 years, but has yet to fully embrace the lessons from the murdered civil rights leader. Not acting, his youngest daughter said Monday.

The Reverend Bernice King, who heads the King Center in Atlanta, says leaders, especially politicians, too often downplay their father’s legacy in the easy cliche of “a comfortable and convenient king.” rice field.

“I love to quote the King during and after the holidays…but we refuse to live the King 24/7,” said Ebenezer, whose father once preached. At a memorial service at the Baptist Church, she made the declaration.

The service, sponsored by the Center and held annually in Ebenezer, was the headline of the 38th Commonwealth King’s Feast Day event. King, who was shot in Memphis in 1968 while advocating for better wages and working conditions for the city’s cleaners, would have celebrated his 94th birthday on Sunday.

In a voice that rises and falls in the same rhythm as his father, Bernice King speaks of institutional and personal racism, economic and medical inequality, police violence, the militarized international order, hard-line immigration structures, and climate. lamented the crisis. Along with the “little progress” in addressing society’s most serious problems, she was “exhausted, outraged and outspoken” to hear her father’s words about justice so widely quoted. I’m disappointed to hear that,” he said.

“He was a prophet of God sent into this nation and even into the world to guide and forewarn us. We ask for inconvenience because it challenges us to do so,” said Bernice King.

President Joe Biden was scheduled to address Monday at the MLK breakfast hosted by Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in Washington. Sharpton began his career as a civil rights organizer as a teenager, as his director of Youth for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Anti-Poverty Project.

“Now is the time to make a choice,” Biden said, as he performed in Ebenezer on Sunday at the invitation of Ebenezer’s senior pastor, Sen. I repeated the theme of my speech. US Senator.

“Do we choose democracy over dictatorship, or community over chaos? Love over hate?” Biden asked Monday. “These are the questions of our time who have run for president to help answer them. …The life and legacy of Dr. King, in my view, points the way forward.”

Other memorials repeat Bernice King’s reminders and Biden’s allusions to “beloved communities,” Martin Luther King’s description of a world where all people are free from fear, discrimination, hunger and violence. I was.

In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu spoke about the fight for truth in an age of extreme partisanship and misinformation.

“Not only do we need to somehow compromise between the left and right halves and the gradient in between, but we also need to be fueled by hoaxes and conspiracy theories to spread hate, abuse, extremism, The white supremacist movement is growing, it’s taking root at every level,” she said.

Wu, the first woman of color to be elected mayor of Boston, said education restores trust. Quoting King, she called for overcoming “fatigue of despair” to make a difference. Wu told her attendees at her memorial service breakfast that she “sometimes tries to break through in the moments when we feel most tired and most desperate,” she said. .

Volunteers in Philadelphia held a “day of service” focused on gun violence prevention. Murders have soared in the city, killing him 516 last year and 562 the year before, the highest total in at least his 60 years.

Some participants in the initiative’s signature project, led by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, worked to assemble gun safety kits for general distribution. According to organizers, the kit includes “a cable lock for the gun and additional safety equipment to protect children.” It also includes information on firearm storage, health and social services, and coping with the aftermath of gun violence.

Other kits being assembled highlighted Temple University Hospital’s “Fighting Chances” program and included materials to help quickly respond to victims at the scene of the shooting, organizers said. says. Recipients must be trained in the use of materials, including tourniquets, gauze, chest seals, and other items to treat serious wounds, they said.

In Selma, Alabama, which inspired the civil rights movement, residents mourned the late King Jr., who recovered from the deadly storm that hit the south last week.

King did not attend Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge for the first march, known as “Bloody Sunday”, in March 1965 when Alabama State Troopers attacked and defeated the marchers. an effort that passed Congress and prompted President Lyndon Johnson to sign his Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Pettus Bridge was unaffected by Thursday’s storm.

Maine’s first Black House speaker urged residents to honor King’s memory by participating in service activities on Monday.

In a statement, Rachel Talbot Ross said, “His unwavering convictions, powerful nonviolent activism, and his vision for peace and justice in our world changed the course of history.” , daughter of Maine’s first black congressman and former president of the Portland NAACP.

“We must follow his example of leading with light and love and recommit ourselves to building a more compassionate, just and equal community,” she added.

At Ebenezer, Warnock, who has led the congregation for 17 years, praised his predecessor’s role in ensuring access to the vote for black Americans. But like Bernice King, the senator cautioned against King’s reductive understanding.

“Don’t call him a civil rights leader. He was a faith leader,” Warnock said. “Faith was the foundation of everything he did. and threatened to kill his new child, he had to take advantage of the fact that he said he was newly met in Montgomery.

King, Warnock, “left the comfort of the filter that made the whole world his parish” and turned faith into “a creative weapon of love and non-violence.”

Resonating with Bernice King’s call for bolder public policy, Warnock noted several advances in his life. Warnock noted that he was born a year after King’s assassination when he ran his two campaigns in the Senate. At this time, both Georgia senators were staunch racists. door. “

But Warnock said, “Because of Dr. King and what you did…I’m sitting in his seat now.”