The renowned “I Have a Dream” speaker and civil rights activist’s legacy continues, more than 50 years after the famous speech was given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Thousands lined up along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in South Los Angeles on Monday, Jan. 20 for the 30th annual Kingdom Day Parade, celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. while dancing to the beat of marching bands and protesting the recent deadly gun confrontations around the country involving police officers and black men.
The parade included 3,000 participants and a replica of the bus Rosa Parks rode in when she was arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white passenger in 1955. People were chanting and holding signs with the words “Black Lives Matter,” a phrase coined during the Ferguson trials in late 2014 involving the shooting of black teen Michael Brown.
“I used to listen to Dr. King’s messages on records,” said Alfred McCall, who was present at the parade. “His message was not just for people of color, but for everybody.”
Participants carried signs that said “Human lives matter” and “Dr. King’s legacy matters,” and some called for justice against the police killings, shouting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” Recent headlines of policemen not being indicted in the fatal shootings of several African American men in Missouri, Los Angeles, New York City, and Cleveland added more fuel to the fire, making this year’s parade even more meaningful to protestors. Civil rights advocates openly discussed the importance of sharing and living out King’s legacy.
In Ferguson, Mo., several members of the Congressional Black Caucus joined with community members at the Wellspring United Methodist Church, recalling the weeks of protests last year following the Brown shooting, and drawing parallels between those events and the weeks of civil demonstrations that helped shape the legacy of Dr. King in the 1950s and 60s.
“We need to be outraged when local law enforcement and the justice system repeatedly allow young, unarmed black men to encounter police and then wind up dead with no consequences,” said Rep. William Lacy Clay, a St. Louis Democrat. “Not just in Ferguson, but over and over again across this country.”
“Between 2005 and 2012, incidents of police altercations or killing between police and African-American happened twice a week,” added Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tx). “During the civil rights movement, those who were seeking to legitimately protest were incarcerated. They were held for simply expressing their viewpoint.”
“We have now come to a point where we’re meshing the work of the civil rights activists with our young activists on criminal justice reform.”
More than 500 miles away from Ferguson, in the small town of Selma, Alabama, some of Hollywood’s best and brightest joined with protestors marching to the Edmund Pettus Bridge—the same place where civil rights protesters were beaten and tear-gassed on the event known as “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, the subject of the Oscar-nominated film “Selma” (2014).
Oprah Winfrey, who both produced and acted in the film, marched along with director Ava DuVernay and actor David Oyelowo, who portrayed Dr. King in the movie. Rapper Common and John Legend, whose song “Glory” is also nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe, performed the song as marchers walking along the top of the famed bridge over the Alabama River.
“The idea is that hope and possibility is real. Look at what they were able to do with so little, and look at how we now have so much. If they could do that, imagine what now can be accomplished with the opportunity through social media and connection, the opportunity through understanding that absolutely we are more alike than we are different,” Winfrey said. “Every single person who was on that bridge is a hero.”
The film chronicled the campaign leading up to the historic march from Selma to Alabama’s capital Montgomery, and the subsequent passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act also spearheaded by King.
Spreading Dr. King’s message of dignity, respect and justice would raise awareness about the current struggles in our country, said Edward Anderson, 24, who gave a speech Monday at the LA parade.
“It’s good to remind young people of his legacy and to march forward,” Anderson said. “And seeing Black Lives Matter creates a sense of solidarity.”
“It makes me feel proud,” added 27-year-old Jess Kent. “We still have a long way to go…but a lot of minorities look to the black community as paving the way.”
(With reports from Associated Press, ABC News, New York Times, Los Angeles Times.)
