January 18, 2000
Keeping King's dream alive into the new millennium
By Cathy Willoughby
Staff Writer
The sing-song verse of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, with added emphasis by poet Herbert Woodward Martin and activist and poet Deborah Ellen Stokes, enthralled the audience of more than a hundred at an annual Martin Luther King Day celebration Monday night.
"Energizing the Dream into the New Millennium'' was the theme of the event sponsored by Heidelberg College, Tiffin University, National Machinery Foundation, Sisters of St. Francis, American Standard Inc., Dr. Samuel Christian, Alex and Nora Dandar, David Shevin, Heidelberg Newman Club, Heidelberg Black Student Union and Heidelberg BUCC.
Martin began with a poem by Dunbar that he termed "prophetic.'' Entitled "He Had His Dream,'' it detailed the life of a man who "all through his life worked up to it.'' His own remarks were about what he, as a youngster, had "taking for granted.''
He chronicled his trips downtown in his youth, traveling on the back of the bus, his experiences, to the young black boy, not being out of the ordinary in the deep South.
"As a family, we staggered our way out of Birmingham,'' he told he audience. "I came after Christmas, the North became my new present."
He told of going with his father downtown in a city in the north and automatically heading for the back of the bus.
"My father caught his breath, and said, 'You don't have to sit in the back of the bus any longer,' '' Martin said. "The next time I went, I had to check and see if what my father said was true. I paid my fare, sat up front ... and nothing happened. That change did not come to the south without pain.''
"When They Listed Colored Soldiers,'' another Dunbar poem, looked at a mother's pride and sorrow as her son went off to war. He spoke in a dialect, talking of her son and her master's sons fighting and dying in the Civil War, fighting for their freedom.
"That was the same freedom that Miss Rosa Parks couldn't walk away from,'' he said. "Martin Luther King, addressing protesters before a bus boycott, asked an elderly lady if she would like to quit. 'My feet is tired, but my soul is rested,' she said."
He said that because of those civil rights fighters in the 1950s and '60s, the young can "lindy hop'' and wear their pants "way too sloppy.''
"We can get away with this because of they," he said, "both black and white, the young and the grizzly and gray, who made the ultimate sacrifices.''
He said that we are in no less difficult times and cited writers who dare to speak their minds, such as Salman Rushdie and David Walker.
"The point is that they made a sacrifice so that I, in relative safety, can write,'' Martin said. "If we are not constantly vigilant, asking the question 'What is right?' we will lose those precious liberties.''
Stokes, an associate professor of English at Central State University and also a Dunbar scholar and poet, spoke to the group about the road to freedom and how much still needs to be done.
She likened King's work to Michelangelo's sculpturing: "Martin Luther King stood before segregation's cold slab and pounded, chiseled, hammered, whatever it took, until Montgomery's, Birmingham's and Selma's walls kept falling down.''
She said that King worked with black youth in order that they may grow "cancer free.''
"He was cognizant of the inherent value of the vast, sometimes daunting, always challenging field of human experiences,'' Stokes said.
She also said that King realized that African-American advancement needed to "take root'' in education's "soil.''
"As long as inequality prevails,'' she said, "it is necessary to maintain our black institutions of higher learning. These are sanctuaries where our young can learn, freed of dogma and grounded with the knowledge of who we are.''
Stokes fears that isolation of people in polarized communities is widening differences between people.
"The concept of civil rights can not exist in polarized minds and communities,'' she added.
She ended her talk with a free verse honoring King.
"Martin Luther King -- Born to champion those who have least ... People ... Born to be black, born to be "nigger,'' born to be bigger than that.''
"Born to be heard. ...''