On January 10, 2017, I was invited to deliver the keynote address for the Kansas City chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Luncheon, one of the largest gatherings of its kind in the country. SCLC was founded in 1957 to organize and coordinate support for desegregation protests happening throughout the South. Dr. Martin Luther King was its first President and the organization played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement.
Here is the transcript of the speech:
—Thank you so much for inviting me here to be a part of this amazing gathering of community leaders, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, aunts and uncles. I need to be this specific because I want to remind us of who we are to one another and what that means for us in our daily lives. We are all connected.
I am excited and honored to be here on this occasion to mark the life of Dr. King and the work and long-standing commitment of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to his vision and march towards justice.
At the age of 17, I left home to live with my paternal grandmother in Las Vegas, Nevada. I attended school during the day and worked 40 hours at night in a food court in a local Casino.
I knew I wanted to go to college, but had no clue how to get there. Up to that point, I couldn’t have told you the difference between and Ivy league School or State-level institution, let alone how to write a standout college essay.
Back in my hometown, there was a teacher, Ms. Roylestine Bowman, who had a reputation for getting kids like me into college. I was convinced that she could help me. On her advice, I applied and was accepted to Howard University in Washington, DC.
When I shared the good news with my family, a relative was quick to point out what I could not see at the time: I had no way to pay for it. I was crushed. The letter that moments earlier seemed like a golden ticket became a heavy weight in my hand.
For the next month or so, I used the payphone across the street from my high school to contact my teacher back home in California for help.
On most days, I left a message and on others I waited patiently on hold until the bell for the next class rang.
Frustrated that time was running out, I boarded a greyhound bus back to my old high school in California during the wee hours of morning. Before the first bell rang, I was standing in the doorway of Ms. Bowman’s classroom begging her for help.
She was stunned--I was supposed to be in a similar classroom four hours away.
Seeing the urgency in my eyes, she asked me to step out of the classroom while she made a phone call. When I returned, she announced that I had received a full-merit scholarship to Howard University.
I made it home that evening just in time for my shift at the food court.
That summer, I boarded a plane with 200.00 in my pocket for Howard University believing it would be enough for a lamp for my dorm room, text books, and food. It wasn’t. It was my first time on an airplane and outside of my community in any significant way.
Howard University, Founder’s Library
I wanted to start out sharing that story with you for two reasons: The first is I believe that if it wasn’t for Ms. Bowman and her love of little black girls and boys like me—that really had no chance—I would not be here. She was doing her part in her own way to ensure that we did not fall through the cracks.
The other is that it has been nearly two decades since I boarded that plane and as I talk to you, not much has changed about the conditions of many of the communities (Compton, Inglewood, and San Bernardino California) that I called home as a child.
What is true is that the public schools in many of our neighborhoods are in far worse condition than before the passage of Brown v. the Board of Education, and more segregated than ever, the growth and privatization of U.S. prisons have robbed many communities of vital human and economic resources.
Double-digit unemployment continues to threaten the day-to-day survival of families, and entire neighborhoods have been ripped apart by neglect, decay and predatory lending practices of large back and lending institutions.
Before November 9, 2016 when I was asked about what I made about the police shootings, the unrest, the protests and the discord, I answered with confidence: “While it is true that we are living in tumultuous and bloody times, this is what progress looks like and we will not turn back. Our progress, our demand for rights and protections and the recognition of our humanity has historically been met with violence.”
Today, as I stand here before you today, I am not so sure. It feels like regression, slippage. And we are scrambling to figure out how we should respond, to better understand who are our allies, and what the work will look like in the coming months and years.
In the last few moments that I have with you I want to ask three questions:
The first is, can we know the truth in this moment? Can we believe our eyes and hearts when we are being told to doubt them, in favor of what is being laid before us and presented as facts?
As we are being told that those that stand for justice are the enemy, that they are causes for national discord and unrest, or that the reasons that we are brutalized is due to our own actions or wrong doing—These are lies, and meant to undermines us and make us colluders in the violence (physically and otherwise) that is perpetrated against us.
We know the truth. We know why we resist and it’s because our humanity continues to be denied and justice delayed. We are witnesses. As Dr. King said, quoting William Cullen Bryant, the truth crushed to earth will rise again. And “No Lie [that is built on the backs of the oppressed] Can Live Forever.”
We must continue to be truth tellers, fact checkers and continue to make moral and material claims for our full humanity and bundle of rights. After these many years, our bundle is still only half full.
The second question is: Are we too comfortable? Are our comfortable lives preventing us from standing up against tyranny and injustice?
The day after the declaration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, I was emotionally devastated and wondered what it meant for my life. I soon found out when my morning alarm rang and I woke my children up for school, got them ready, went to the gym and then on to work—Nothing had immediately changed. I went about my day as I normally do. AND that is the danger. I can turn away, tune out, and let the others fight the battles for me.
If I choose to, I can engage on my own terms and in my own way. However, if I am inconvenienced or do not agree with the strategy or tactics, or feel any discomfort, I can turn away or disengage. This is the luxury my comfort has afforded me and my unwillingness (unspoken or otherwise) to sacrifice the gains that I have personally made so that we all may be free, safe, and economically secure.
In this political moment, we cannot afford the luxury that our lives have afforded us. As Dr. King said in response to eight Alabama Clergy Men in 1963 in his letter from a Birmingham Jail, our fates our connected. He said, “I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
There is more that we can all do, and today we must push ourselves outside of the boundaries of our comfort zones and outside of our small communities with people who look, think, act, dress and think they way that we do. Our disconnectedness is killing us, literally and figuratively.
The last question, I want to ask is how can the Black Church once again reassert itself in the fight for rights and justice in America? Today, our struggle and our battles are being fought by a small, but mighty group of organizations and individuals that are working themselves into exhaustion on the behalf us all. I am here to say NO MORE.
We can no longer afford this type of imbalance, when know the history of the church and its congregants (understood as all of us), to be the frontline defense against bigotry, moral dishonesty, hate and violence.
We have become distracted by messages of living our own individual prosperous lives and who can or cannot worship with us because of who they are and whom they love. To me, and I can only speak for myself in this moment, this is not the work or the church of Dr. King.
In an address to the Conference on Christian Faith and Human Relations in Nashville, King said, “ We must learn the simple act of loving our neighbors and respect the dignity and worth of all human personality.” He said that the church had a moral obligation and duty to stand up to the injustices of our time, to not sit idly by. The Church must take the lead in strong Christian action, he said, and must move into the arena and social change. And this, I believe, is what we have to do.
So, what can we do, right now. We must not turn back. There is hope and possibility in our cities and our neighborhoods. Start there. There are campaigns to raise the minimum wage, ensure that women have access to the full range of reproductive health options, immigration reform, affordable housing, building safer communities, or against police violence. Many of us are already engaged, DO more. Even I can do more and I know it.
Let’s connect up and out, leave the comfort of our homes, go places and engage people that we don’t normally engage. Feel and embrace the tension as Dr. King would say, that comes along with that.
At the National level, continue to stay engaged and do not look away. While there is slippage, there’s still much progress to be made and work to be done there.
I want to end where I started with Ms. Bowman, the woman I owe much of my success—She was just one woman doing her part, she was a mother, a sister and a grandmother. Like Dr. King, she saw and believed that we were all connected.
In my heart, even though recently I have doubted the direction we are moving, I am still here ready to join with anyone who is willing to continue the march towards justice that Dr. King articulated in so many ways through his words, deeds and action more than a half century ago.
Thank you!