Speakers honoring the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr at his spiritual home in Atlanta, Georgia, repeated the same message on his national holiday on Monday: We have come a long way, but there is still much to be done to fulfill the slain civil rights activist’s dream.
The holiday came against the backdrop of recent protests across the US over the deaths of unarmed black men and boys at the hands of police officers around the nation.
King’s daughter, the Reverend Bernice King, urged those gathered at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta for the 47th annual Martin Luther King Jr Annual Commemorative Service to act out against injustice.
Photo: AFP
However, she also said they should heed her father’s message of nonviolence.
“We cannot act unless we understand what Dr King taught us. He taught us that we still have a choice to make: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation,” she said. “I challenge you to work with us as we help this nation choose nonviolence.”
She invoked the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York City and the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio.
All three were killed by white police officers.
“I cannot help but remember many women and men who have been gunned down, not by a bad police force, but by some bad actors in a police force,” she said.
Protesters in California, many of them students at Stanford University, reportedly blocked the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, forcing westbound lanes to close for more than an hour on Monday night, authorities said.
The California Highway Patrol said numerous protesters were in custody and dozens could be seen being loaded into vans and taken off the bridge.
The Northeast Ohio Media Group reported that about 60 people gathered on Monday at a recreation center where a Cleveland police officer fatally shot the 12-year-old. Their march ended at the city’s public square and police officials told the group that some arrests were made.
In Seattle, authorities reported a handful of arrests after dozens chanting “Black lives matter” allegedly disrupted traffic in the city, blocking part of a state highway and interstate offramps. Seattle officials advised motorists to take alternate routes when one side of a key state route was temporarily blocked.
The shootings of unarmed black people sparked protests and debate over police officers’ use of force. The tensions grew after two New York City officers were shot to death last month by a man who suggested in online posts that he was retaliating for the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York.
The alleged shooter, a black man, reportedly committed suicide.
Six months after Garner died in a white police officer’s chokehold, protests and speeches invoking Garner’s name provided a backdrop to King tributes in New York.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had supported the demonstrations that followed a grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer in Garner’s death, fracturing his relationship with the city’s police unions. Yet on Monday he vowed that the metropolis would emerge a more unified city.
“We will move forward as a city. We will move forward to deeper respect for all,” De Blasio said at the annual Martin Luther King Day event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, his city’s largest tribute.
US President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, sought to focus on the next generation.
In Washington, Obama and his wife, Michelle, went with one of their daughters, Malia, to a site for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington to paint murals and assemble “literacy kits” of flashcards and books to help youngsters improve their reading and writing abilities.
Earlier in Atlanta, actor David Oyelowo said playing King in the film Selma was deeply emotional and a heavy burden to bear.
“I felt his pain. I felt his burden. I felt the love he had for his family. I felt the love he still has for you, Dr Bernice King,” he said, addressing King’s daughter.
Oyelowo cried as he talked about putting himself in King’s place.
“I only stepped into his shoes for a moment, but I asked myself: ‘How did he do it?’” Oyelowo said. He added that he, like King, has four children and said he cannot imagine walking through life knowing there are people who wanted to take their lives, or that of his wife.
US Representative John Lewis told the Atlanta crowd that he was just 17 when King sent him a bus ticket to head to Alabama to join the civil rights movement.
Lewis, who marched alongside King, recalled the man he called his hero as a man who is “still a guiding light in my life.”
“The memory of such a great man can never, ever fade,” Lewis said. “I still think about him almost every day.”
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