Are King’s principles ‘turning the corner’ on hate in Conn.?
After a tumultuous year, where racial disparities were magnified by the coronavirus and the George Floyd crisis, admirers of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. say the way forward is to combine his nonviolent principles with the lessons of 2020.
“Dr. King said, ‘Take the first step, even if you don’t see the whole staircase,’ and that’s why I am so proud of all the people who are speaking out for justice,” said Khanisha Denise Moore, 27, of Norwalk, a coordinator at the New Haven-based nonprofit Rise Network. “Dr. King said, ‘Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”
The president of the New Haven NAACP agrees.
“We are seeing more and more white people who can no longer deny what we have been talking about for so long, who are empathetic and want to be part of the solution,” said Doris Dumas. “These are people who know that they have to be antiracists, instead of being part of the problem by saying (racism) doesn’t exist.”
The national holiday honoring King’s legacy on Monday follows a riotous start to 2021 that has already seen an attack on the Capitol by extremist supporters of President Trump, who chanted for the elimination of the nation’s top elected leaders. News reports and social media chatter about threats of violent outbreaks leading to the inauguration of Joe Biden on Wednesday only heighten the appeal of King’s principals of civility, equality and solidarity, Black leaders said.
“I definitely believe that we are about to turn the corner – even when you look at what has gone on in the past week with the rioting at the Capitol in Washington,
D.C., which we have seen was instigated by our leader,” said the Rev. Joseph Ford, senior pastor at Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Stamford, and the religious affairs committee chair of the Stamford NAACP. “As our new president is inaugurated, we will see a change in temperament, and we will be able to get back to working together, because, as Dr. King said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.’”
Monday’s holiday also comes during the second surge of the coronavirus, which has canceled in-person services in Bridgeport, Danbury, New Haven, Norwalk, Stamford and elsewhere across the state, where communities have traditionally gathered to commemorate King’s contributions and invoke his vision.
Depending on the location, some NAACP chapters are focusing more this year on outreach and community service, while Black leaders in other cities are hosting virtual services on the teleconferencing platform, Zoom.
In Danbury, for example, the longstanding tradition of a Martin Luther King Day breakfast celebration at New Hope Baptist Church is going virtual.
“Dr. King was not just about the African-American race, but
about everybody – just like it wasn’t just African-Americans who followed Dr. King,” said Gladys Cooper, a member of the committee that organizes the celebration each year at the baptist church, and the chairperson of the Danbury Board of Education. “That is why our committee has always felt that we need to have this program every year, no matter what.”
Cooper and other longtime followers of King’s example said when the lessons of 2020 are grounded in King’s nonviolent principles, the takeaways are clear:
2020 held up a mirror that forced America to look at itself honestly.
Everyone has a duty to reflect on their own role in society, and improve it.
Change is possible. Younger disciples of King agree.
Among the influencers of 2020 were teenagers such as Shoshana Mahon of Bridgeport, who organized a protest and a forum on racism as part of last summer’s nationwide civil disobedience, following the public slaying of George Floyd in police custody.
“It was great seeing white people and non-Black people coming out to support us,” said Mahon, 18. “I can relate to King’s purpose
to make change and bring Black people and white people together. I feel like we made a change.”
2020’s lessons
The coronavirus crisis highlighted longstanding disparities between the white suburbs and communities of color in access to health care, in preparedness for distance learning, and in job security, among other areas.
“We were not surprised by this, because we have been battling so many fights on so many fronts for so many years that it’s tiring. It’s wearing on us, but we have to keep fighting,” said Dumas from the New Haven NAACP. “These are the fights we have daily. This is the dream King had.”
If there’s any solace in the suffering COVID-19 caused the most vulnerable, it’s that those with more comfortable lives may have been forced by the quarantine to pay more attention to the Black fight for equal treatment, some observers in the Black community said.
“COVID literally taught us to sit and be still and spend more time more time in reflection about where we have been, where we are going and what we want to do,” said Norwalk’s Moore. “We have all been a virus in one way or another in how we have
treated other people, and being able to sit still and listen to stories on news platforms, we can stop and say, ‘Does it make sense that this person hates me because I was born this way?’”
The at-home effect of the pandemic may have also contributed to the widespread outrage communities expressed in Connecticut and across the country after May 25, when a white police officer kept his knee pinned on the neck of a Black man until the victim stopped breathing.
“The death of a George Floyd and a Breyonna Taylor and an Ahmaud Arbery gave the nation an opportunity to stand up and say, ‘This is not right,’ ‘This is not just,’” said Stamford’s Ford. “I do think some of this was facilitated by COVID, because so many of us were home, and this is what our attention was on.”
Ford is among those filled with hope as the nation prepares to commemorate a civil saint on Monday.
“I am so proud of the millennials because they are a generation that wants their voices heard,” Ford said. “As Dr. King said, ‘Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.’”