Martin Luther King Day is a time to remember the legacy of the most prominent civil rights leader in U.S. history. He is one of the few leaders who activated change on a political level without being elected to public office.
Behind every speech he gave and every march he led was a purpose, a call to action. In that spirit, many leaders in the Minnesota community are commemorating his life and legacy by continuing to answer the call.
Timothy Berry, interim associate vice president for faculty affairs and equity initiatives for Mankato State University, remembers the marches and efforts to commemorate King’s legacy. From where he lived in North Minneapolis, Berry saw the efforts to put King’s name among those celebrated for their contribution to this country.
“The holiday is fine, but it’s more about the commemoration and remembering King in the same way that people remember other so-called great Americans,” he says. “I feel like I was on the forefront nationally with a lot of other people around the country.”
Berry is a performing artist with a couple of groups that focus on music born of the African American experience, including R&B and gospel. In the legacy of King, Berry sees music as a source of inspiration for social movements. King was famous for having musicians like Mahalia Jackson perform before his speeches.
“When he would feel like he was down, she would sing him ‘Precious Lord, Take my Hand,’” says Berry. “Even though he was not necessarily an artist, he attached himself in line with the people who were, and he benefited from the expression.”
Dr. Brittney Lewis is CEO of Research in Action. She came to the field because she felt people of color and Indigenous communities — particularly women — were more likely to be harmed than befitted by traditional research.
Lewis says each of us has a unique approach to pushing for change. “[King] was showing us a different way to activate on behalf of folks being left behind or left out,” she says. “My medium is engaged research; his medium was the pulpit.
“Like an artist uses a paintbrush to create change, I’ve chosen to repurpose the data collection processes that have been harmful to us.”
What’s blocking progress
Large-scale, lasting impacts like King made are difficult because of changing and expanding obstacles. Pastor Donnell Bratton explains the ones he sees.
“I see these so-called leaders that the only time they have been called or moved to impact the community is when someone who doesn’t look like them, who’s sitting behind a computer, is creating a narrative that is handed to us on how we should serve each other,” he says.
Bratton came to the movement when his church, Congregation of Zion, responded to community needs exacerbated by Covid-19. He made efforts to meet the needs of a community angered and grieving over the murder of George Floyd.
He says some leaders are shackled by guidelines in the form of grants to support initiatives, and many times the grants become the motive. “They are not moved by someone who is just strung out on fentanyl. They’re not moved by some people getting evicted [from] their house. They are not moved by a kid shooting another kid.”
Lewis sees obstacles in the legislative process. As she works across city, county and state governmental structures, she sees leaders working in isolation.
“We’re forced to navigate either partnering with folks or trying to change a practice or policies that exist across multiple agencies,” she says. “I acknowledge that yes, we are functioning in silos. The systems that we are often interacting with make it challenging to do it differently, but not impossible.”
In education, Berry says of King, “there was a tendency when I was growing up for educators even then to teach just the dream part but not the nightmare.” His ideas on the military-industrial complex and the challenge of balancing the warring ideologies of capitalism and democracy were often omitted.
“You see a pushback from people on the political spectrum…to try to legislate and/or run on banning books or banning Black history,” Berry says. “[They are] trying to keep people from actually learning about any of the things that King actually stood for, fought for.”
Deep connection with community
Atum Azzahir’s leadership at the Cultural Wellness Center is inspired by King’s ability to stay connected to the communities he served.
“He stayed among the people to hear what they had to say,” Azzahir explains. “He knew the story. He wasn’t quoting something that someone had told him. He was among the people feeling the same things they felt. And that kind of connectedness with him, that didn’t break.”
This level of connectedness is essential in affecting social change. “When Dr. King died, the feeling that people had, that level of connectedness to him was like a father, a brother, a son, a husband,” she says. “I see some of that in some of the movements that are happening right now.”
Azzahir says she sees efforts to make decisions with the people most affected in the room. “Even around George Floyd Square the thing that you’ll hear is that the people are being left out of the decisions,” she says. “The people who lived and had their lives there even before Mr. Floyd was murdered, those are the people that our organizers are bringing to the table.
“That is an example of something [King] lived and breathed and practiced,” she continues. “That, I believe, is among the people today who are the frontline workers in the movement.”
Berry says the site of King’s murder speaks to his connection to the community. “All of his earnings went into the Movement,” says Berry. “The famous hotel that he was assassinated at in Memphis was not the greatest posh hotel. He was trying to be with the people.”
Moved by the spirit
Dr. Lewis urges people not to let obstacles block what they see as a path to progress. “The energy that I move with [is] that if someone tells me there is only one way, I’ll show you 10,” she says. “I feel like sometimes you’re looking for permission, or accolades…instead of just putting your head down and doing something.
“Don’t let someone tell you there’s only one way, because there are multiple [ways].”
Dr. Berry urges people of African descent to use creative expression — music, singing and dance — as a way of uplifting us from the oppressive feeling of our circumstances. “Not as an artist, like in terms of vocation,” he explains, “[but as] one who participates because this is something that anybody can do in terms of physical or creative expression.”
Azzahir says King teaches us to move by the spirit. “It was his nature as a person of African descent to always be aware of the spirit, the spirit guiding us, and the spiritual forces and laws in creation being the ground on which we stand.”
Bratton credits King and others like him for moving the country forward with the strength of their spiritual might. “[King] took the pen from the narrator and wrote it himself: ‘This is what I see because I live here. I experienced it myself.’
“The old civil rights leaders, they did it with nothing,” says Bratton. “And as the young people would say, they did it from the mud. They were moved because there was a supernatural spiritual, an energy that impacted them that said, ‘Go do it!’”
Vickie Evans-Nash welcomes reader responses to vnash@spokesman-recorder.com.