Multiple events scheduled during April MLK50 anniversary week
MEMPHIS — On April 4, 1968, the eyes of the world turned to Memphis in response to the most horrifying and heartbreaking of spectacles: The murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Fifty years later, on April 4, 2018, the eyes of the world will again turn to Memphis. But this time Memphis intends to fill those eyes with evidence of courage and determination. If tears are shed, they should be tears of hope, not grief.
Abbreviated for purposes of social-media branding and tagging to “MLK50,” the 50th anniversary recognition of the life and legacy of King culminates in April with a lineup of local events largely centered on the National Civil Rights Museum, the institution that incorporates much of what King’s colleague, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, called the “sacred” ground of the Lorraine Motel, where the visionary Nobel Peace Prize winner and American champion of freedom lost his life.
The urgent question that functioned as the title of King’s final book, “Where Do We Go from Here?” is the theme for these MLK50 events, which should demonstrate that the type of social activism embodied by the slain civil rights leader remains as essential as ever to America’s ongoing attempts to embody the Pledge of Allegiance’s promise of “liberty and justice for all.”
While celebrating the resolve of decades past, the events will function as encouragement for the new generation of community advocates: the Black Lives Matter protesters, the Women’s March participants, the Parkland school shooting survivors and others. Carrying on in the King tradition, these are the people working to reignite interest in social justice and political reform even as competing forces seek to promote racial disharmony, to discourage religious tolerance and to turn back the clock on voting rights.
Here, in chronological order, is a preview of some of the key MLK50 events.
› March 26-April 13 — Purchased by the Memphis philanthropist and business leader Avron B. Fogelman, the original copy of King’s 20-page “We Shall Overcome” sermon,
which the civil rights leader first delivered in 1965, will be on display at the Ned R. McWherter Library at the University of Memphis. The speech includes some of King’s handwriting.
› March 27 — Set for 6 p.m. in the McNeill Concert Hall at Rhodes College, “Rhodes Remembers: MLK50” will gather many of the school’s alumni for a look at how the events of 1968 impacted the prestigious liberal arts college, then and now.
› March 28-29 — The “Seeing Civil Rights” symposium at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art will bring together artists, historians and scholars to examine the role of art and photography in chronicling the civil rights movement and promoting social change. The focus in particular will be on longtime Memphis photographer Ernest C. Withers, whose iconic images of “black Memphis” and the civil rights struggle are celebrated in an exhibit that will be up through Aug. 19 at the Brooks.
› April 1 — The anniversary of King’s death inspires a particularly life-affirming activity via the Memphis City Beautiful Commission, which is asking everybody to “Plant Red Flowers for King” in April. To kick off the campaign, red flowers will be planted at the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Second Street, site of the planned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reflection
Site.
› April 2-3 — The “MLK50 Symposium” will bring scholars, historians and “thought leaders” to the University of Memphis for two days of sessions. The first day’s panels will take place at downtown’s University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, with a lunch break at The Peabody, where the keynote luncheon speaker will be Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General under President Barack Obama. The second day’s sessions are set for the Memphis Michael D. Rose Theatre on the U of M campus, with lunch at the Holiday InnUniversity of Memphis, where the speaker will be Pulitzer Prize-winner Taylor Branch, author of the monumental trilogy, “America in the King Years.”
› April 3 — Starting at 1 p.m. the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, hosts an eight-hour seminarplus-more titled “Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop.” According to the SBC, the event recognizes that the anniversary of King’s death provides “an opportunity for Christians to reflect on the state of racial unity in the church and the culture. It creates the occasion to reflect on where Christians have been and look ahead to where we must go as we pursue racial unity in the midst of tremendous tension.”
› April 4— Starting at 10 a.m., the National Civil Rights Museum hosts “A Day of Remembrance,” a tribute to King and his legacy with some particularly poignant activities. At 3:30 p.m., ceremonial “Laying of the Wreath” will occur on the balcony outside King’s Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel; and at 6:01 p.m. (the time when King was struck by a sniper’s bullet), the museum will lead a national “Bell Toll” in King’s honor; the hope is that churches, campuses and other places around the country will join the museum in tolling their bells 39 times each — once for each year of King’s life.
The “Day of Remembrance” concludes with “An Evening of Storytelling” featuring such civil rights warriors, scholars and young innovators as — to name only a few — Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman; Georgia Congressman and Selma voting rights campaigner John Lewis; 1960s civil rights student leader Diane Nash; Clarence Jones, who helped draft King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; lawyer Mike Cody, who represented King in Memphis; Bree Newsome, who gained national attention when she removed the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house in 2015; and Tami Sawyer, the local activist whose grassroots TakeEmDown901 organization was instrumental in the removal of the Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest statues from Memphis public parks.
› April 5 — Organized by LeMoyne-Owen College, the 11 a.m. “We Remember King: 50 Year Reflection and Memorial Service” at historic Metropolitan Baptist Church, 767 Walker, will be a recreation of a student-led memorial service that took place the day after King’s assassination.
› April 5 — While many MLK50 events celebrate the past, the 7 p.m. “Concert for the Next 50 Years” at Clayborn Temple looks toward a better future via a hopeful program of inspiring orchestral and vocal music.
› April 7 — The organization Voices of Justice in the Mid-South hosts a salute to “MLK and the 1968 Clergy Strike Participants,” in recognition of the many clergy members who joined King in support of the dignity of Memphis’ striking sanitation workers. The 11 a.m. event will be at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, 692 Poplar.