During the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Monday on the grounds of Marlboro School Community Center, the life and legacy of King were honored.
Speaker Rev. Jeremy Bethea started with a story told by King during the early days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott when he received a phone call at midnight telling him that “we are tired of you and your mess. If you are not out of town in three days, we will blow your brains out and blow your house up.”
King said he was shaken by it and went to the kitchen to pray when he heard a voice tell him “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, and stand up for truth.”
Bethea noted 52 years later after King’s death, hearing so many untruths in these four years and after witnessing on television in real-time the events of Jan. 6, people should have been shaken.
“We should have been shaken but not scared,” he said. “Shaken enough to say that it is now time. It is past our time to stand up for righteousness, to stand up for justice, and stand up for truth.”
He talked about when Rosa Parks remained seated that in many ways, she was standing up.
“And though some said she was tired, the question was what was she tired of,” Bethea said. “Tired of being made to believe she was less than somebody else. Tired of constantly having to allow someone to get in front of her. Tired of being settled and comfortable and then having to get up and move. Tired of having folks look at her and still not see her.”
Ultimately what started the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama and launched a young King on the national scene was the fact that in that city there lived a group of people who were simply tired.
“There came a point when they decided that they were going to do something other than talk about how tired they were,” he said. “They recognized they had a certain ability. They were a minority but they had a certain power.”
When King got a threatening phone call, he prayed. King did what our ancestors did on the plantations of slavery, they prayed.
“They understood they had power in prayer,” Bethea said. “They also recognized they had power in their pocketbooks. What caused a change in Montgomery, Alabama was the fact the city was losing money when black folks stopped riding the bus.”
In 2018, African Americans had $1.3 trillion of buying power.
“We have power in prayer,” he said. “We have power in our pocketbooks. We have power at the polls.”
Bethea talked about how even though Stacey Abrams lost the gubernatorial campaign in Georgia due to voter suppression and the purging of the voter rolls, she didn’t go sit in a corner and talk about how bad the system was.
“She went about the business of going to work,” he said. “She organized and educated people on their right and obligation to vote. She made the vision plain that if you do this, this is what the end can be.”
King gained success because he kept on working, Bethea added and kept on believing.
He referenced King’s “I Have A Dream” speech when he talked about having a dream where one day his four children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
He added Barack Obama was one of his children. Kamala Harris was one of his children. Raphael Warnock was one of his children.
People talk about truth, love, and justice in this country.
“The truth of the matter is that we live in a nation that has not and doesn’t always love us. And because the nation does not always love us, it doesn’t always extend justice to us. Sometimes Lady Justice needs to take her blindfold off and see that we too are somebody.”
Dr. King was trying to get America to see that what some see is not what all see.
“We see segregation and denigration. We see suppression and oppression. What you see is business as usual. We see a struggle in our past and a struggle right now. We also see that better days are coming soon.”
Bethea talked about George Floyd, Tamar Rice, Walter Scott, Micheal Brown, and Brionna Taylor.
“We see the very life of people being choked out of them. Others act like they don’t even care.
We are tired of running a race with our feet being tied. We are tired of trying to win the race when others are given a head start. We are tired of being told to work for it yet not having anything to work with.”
Bethea continued by saying we still live in a nation where all men are not created equal.
He referenced several of King’s quotes such as Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of love. That out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. I also heard him say that if I help somebody along the way then my living is not in vain.
Bethea told those in attendance, they should be able to walk the walk.
“You can walk to the food pantry and give them some food,” he said. “After the corona is over, you can walk the halls of the nursing home and tell a resident hello. You can walk into the city hall and the council meetings. You can walk into the schools before your children get in trouble. You can walk to the polls and let your voice be heard. You can walk door to door and encourage others to do the same.”
He concluded by saying if you keep on walking, the God that we serve, will be with us.
“There might be some storms, rains, fires, and floods,” Bethea said. “If you keep on walking, God will see us through. If we keep our hands in his hands, the God that we serve will make everything alright.”
After the event, Marlboro School Community Center board member Bishop Ulysses Sullivan said they need to keep the message in our communities of our forefathers and what they went through and we can’t go back on the importance of making sure that the good news of how we overcame the struggle needs to keep lingering on in our community.
“So our young people will know where we came from and where we are going,” Sullivan said. “If people don’t know their past, how can they know their future. So that message has lingered today.”
Sullivan said the number in attendance was small but sometimes we can’t worry about the numbers but the most important is did you leave an impact.
“I think today was a good day that left an impact and the importance of maintaining heritage,” he said. “Our history means something. We have got to hold onto that history so we can know how to plan and move forward for our future.”