On a cold and rainy Jan. 18 evening, at St. Paul’s Baptist Church, members of every faith of Pittsburgh’s East End Cooperative Ministry came together to honor and reminisce on the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral leadership. The event tried to highlight and accentuate the importance of content of character, not creed or color, as a bevy of diverse speakers each read chapters of Holy Scripture to a church filled to capacity.
If you were there, you heard Leviticus 19:11-19 read in ancient Hebrew, you heard Chapter 24 versus 35-42 in the Qur’an read in Arabic in perfect ululation. English translations followed as well.
The keynote was given by Dr. Cecile Springer, a noted women of repute, who has devoted her life to the liberal arts, humanities and sciences, won National Association of Social Workers Public Citizen of the Year and actually heard King speak for herself in his 1966 speech in Pittsburgh in which he said, “We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.”
Springer’s rumination on King’s journey from humble Montgomery preacher to martyr in the course of 13 dramatic and strenuous years of obstacles, triumphs and defeats, left an air of how relevant his fights in the fifties and sixties are to the time in which we live in 2015. Gun violence in the Black community as well as police violence are issues drawing people to the streets by the thousands every day in non-violent civil unrest, which King championed.
Springer afterwards in a Q&A session highlighted these issues and brought up a poignant argument about how Black police are treated by their own.
“In 2012 15 policemen were killed by other policemen because they weren’t recognized,” she said.
“Of those 15, 14 were Black. What does that say? It says police are not being trained to listen to what people are saying to find out who that person is.”
Another topic on the lips of patrons was the movie “Selma” which is in theaters now and tells a crucial chapter in the Civil Rights Movement. Springer said she was left feeling underwhelmed because of inaccuracies. “Johnson took on the energy that Kennedy had for the civil rights bill so that depiction was not accurate.” At the end of the discussion Springer was asked to muse on King’s legacy if he had evaded death.
She was cynical about the prospects of his future, reminding us of how different the man was treated when he was alive. “I don’t know how successful he would’ve been because he was confronted by the Black power movement…and he wasn’t current when he was killed. I think it all turned emotionally when he was killed.” She went on, “I think that Martin Luther King would be very critical of President Obama. Obama is not articulating the issues that you would expect a Black president to. And I think that if King were to challenge Obama that Obama might change.”
After service many people discussed what the King legacy personally meant to them over refreshments with one another. Many felt that we as a society are still not at the mountaintop that King had foresaw.
Michael J. Mingrone, executive director, East End Cooperative Ministry, reflected, “It seems like in the history of this country, someone has to be slain for a change to be made. Although there was progress it’s just now us waking up to what the true message is. Regardless of what political side you fall on, the idea that these young folks are so frustrated of injustice that they have to act out and understand the legacy of non-violence in getting things accomplished, it is an interesting juxtaposition to how our community comes together.”
Helen Blier, director of Continuing Education at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and a co-organizer of the event said, “As much as I want to celebrate all of the amazing things that have happened in the 47 years since his assassination, it is hard to look at the events since Michael Brown and other Black men, and the growing rift between the rich and the poor with the top one percent possessing more of the wealth in the country and not think we have so much work to do.”
She continued, “To be located in an educational institution that is training people for ministry… it is my hope that they will know what it means to continue his work when they go out and start their own churches, work on non-profits, sit with people who are sick and poor and know that this is where we are called to be. This is what it means to be human.”
King would have been 86.
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