“Our Work Isn’t Done.”

By Douglas Graves © 2009


High spirits and hope for the future filled the crowd as the Star of Bethlehem aligned with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision from the mountain top and coincided with the next day’s inauguration of the 44th president, Barack Obama, and his vision for change in the way that America does business.
About 150 people crammed into Sayre Hall at the Episcopal Church of the Nativity on Wyandotte Street in Bethlehem on Monday, Jan. 19 to commemorate the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The hosting clergy had to scramble, bringing more chairs into the large room to accommodate the more than expected number of attendees.
Master of Ceremony duties were ably done by Liberty High School student and student leader Stephen Font-Toomer. He was there, he said, “To honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—he was so great. No one stepped up to the plate to do what he did.”
Sponsored by the Bethlehem Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the event featured dances by two youth groups and a chorale performance by the Lepoco Peace Singers. Aspiring opera singer Krizia Nelson, a Freedom High School senior and the Show Case Choir president gave good evidence of her bright future by singing a solo to entertain the room. Nelson, the daughter of Carl and Millie Nelson, hopes to attend the Oberlin Conservatory for Music in Ohio.
“Martin Luther King was inspirational; not just to me, to all people,” said Nelson. “It’s all a chain reaction. Martin Luther King opened up doors for change and non-violence.
A troupe led by Liberty High School ninth grader Yasmine Dowdell performed a step dance to everyone’s delight. The Wings For Life dancers also entertained.
However, the festive mood changed when the guest speakers began to access racial justice in America.
“We are all enamored with the results of the election and with Barack Obama,” said Stephanie Hnatiw, the Executive Director of the YWCA. “But I think one consequence of the Obama victory is that Americans who are not black will figure racism and its legacy has finally been defeated.” This would be wrong according to Hnatiw.
“Our work isn’t done,” she said. We still have a very, very long way to go.”
The YWCA director then gave some statistics to illustrate her point: Medium income for a black household is $25,000 while for a white household its $40,477; high school graduation rates—80 percent for whites, 60 percent for blacks; the chances of going to prison—16.2 percent for a black person but 2.8 percent for a white; black men in college in 2000—603,032 were outnumbered by black men in prison—791,600. Hnatiw provide additional evidence illustrating the racial disparity in other areas such as health, drug abuse and housing.
“We can’t stop now,” she said. “We have to continue the struggle. Racial justice will be here when there is no disparity among the races.”
Bethlehem Area School District executives Dr. Joseph Lewis and Thomas Washington had front row seats at the event so heavily attended by Liberty High School students and alumni. Among the students present was Liberty High School’s tenth grade class president, Kevin Peterman who, wearing a necktie under an Obama tee-shirt, had just returned from Martin Luther King Park where he had given a speech.
When Liberty High School alumnus Dr. Ernest H. Smith, a retired medical doctor now living in Los Angeles, spoke he reminded the audience of Bethlehem’s long history of racial tolerance. He said he had been in the Liberty High School marching band when it was invited to President Harry Truman’s inaugural parade in 1949. “It was the only integrated unit marching in the parade,” he said. He related how, on orders from the Secret Service, he and his brother were moved from the ends of the ranks they were in and placed in the middle so that potential racists in the crowd would not be able to attack them easily.
[It was an Executive Order by President Truman in 1948 that directed the Armed Forces and the Civil Service to integrate. As a result, his popularity was so low that most observers thought it would cost him re-election.]
While Martin Luther King “had a dream,” Dr. Smith recalled that the Civil War-era heroine, Harriet Tubman, also “had a dream.” [Tubman, born a slave in Maryland, had escaped. She took on the mission to rescue other slaves from bondage, making 13 trips and rescuing over 70 slaves.]
Dr. Smith, while sharing in the general euphoria of the moment, had a cautionary view of the meaning of Obama’s election.
Dr. Smith reminded the audience that while the ancestors of African-Americans came to this country involuntarily, dragged in the chains of slavery, Barack Obama who he describes as an American-African, was born in the United States of a father who came voluntarily as a free man.
“If you don’t have that root of slavery, you can’t claim to be an African-American,” he said. “Americans can’t think that because Obama is the president that the issue of African-American slavery is solved because it is not. The issue is still on the table.”
He said that African-Americans were emancipated by war and law; that Barack Obama cannot carry that baggage for them.
Dr. Smith also compared the reparations that interned Japanese-Americans got with the “40 acres and a mule” that he said some Union generals thought freed slaves should have been awarded but were not. [“The (United States’) redress program made $20,000 payments to 82,210 Japanese Americans or their heirs,” according to Democracy Now.]
The celebration wrapped up with the crowd joining hands in small groups and singing the civil rights hymn, “We Shall Overcome,” ending with the line, “ . . . oh deep in my heart, I do believe, the Lord will see us through some day.”