‘He stood up to those forces every day’
King remembered in Connecticut
Elected officials, school children and social activists across Connecticut paid tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, the federal holiday that marks his birthday.
The titan of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s would have turned 93 over the weekend, had he not been killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1968. Students from Norwalk, Danbury and Middletown participated in one of the events, mostly remote, held in towns from Stamford to Branford.
“I remember watching videos of him and others marching and being hit in the head with rocks and all kinds of stuff that they had to endure, and him being a voice for the people and for the movement,” said Chris Wilson, an entrepreneur and artist who headlined Branford’s 37th annual MLK event.
Wilson authored a book documenting his rise from a hard upbringing in Baltimore, and spoke during Monday’s event of how his mother’s sexual assault at the hands of his stepfather, a police officer, led him to spiral onto a path that would see him sentenced to
life in prison. Released after 16 years, he recalled how learning about the civil rights movement while working towards a sociology degree inspired him.
“I honestly felt ashamed of myself that our people had been through so much and here I was in prison and wasting my life,” Wilson recalled during the event, held over Zoom. “I went from feeling just ashamed of myself to being motivated to pick up the torch and finish the work.”
Gov. Ned Lamont paid tribute to King in a pre-recorded video
“When it comes to speaking truth to power, I hope that’s one of the things we remember about Martin Luther King,” the governor said. “He stood up to those forces every day, and I’d like to think some of those values he got during his summer here in Connecticut right down the street in Simsbury.”
King was among a group of Morehouse College students who worked the tobacco fields at a farm in the town. He later recalled the experience of being able to eat in Hartford’s restaurants without fear of discrimination in a letter to his mother. But others who marked the day pointed to the nation’s continuing divide over race and issues of social justice.
“We don’t have segregation in the physical form,” said state Rep. Bobby Gibson, a Democrat whose district includes Bloomfield and Windsor. “But do we have segregation in the economic or in the form in which we are all living as equals and we have equality and we have equity?” he asked, speaking during a virtual event commemorating the day hosted by the state legislature’s Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity. “This was Dr. King’s dream that we would have these things. But how do we live up to his legacy?”
Students who spoke during the event shared quotes from King and talked about what his words meant in their own lives.
Terrence Lamont Jackson Jr., a senior at Middletown High School, drew parallels between King’s words and marches and protests in 2020 following the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
“I was already feeling the mental effects of remote learning, but I remember feeling scared and helpless for the first time in my life, all because of the color of my skin,” Jackson said. After Arbery’s death, Jackson’s mother forbade the teen from going for a run “not because it was too cold, but because she was now scared for me to run in our own neighborhood.”
Jackson said he lost his fear after his mother spoke at a protest for George Floyd’s death and watching the movement of protests grow. “Martin Luther King didn’t let anyone or anything stop him from speaking, marching or protesting,” Jackson said. “If you think about all he went through on that bloody Sunday in Selma, because of his legacy, we didn’t let the virus stop us from protesting for what was right,” he said.