Dr. James Harris, president of the New Jersey NAACP, delivers the keynote address at the Red Bank Community Commemorative Celebration for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Pilgrim Baptist Church on Jan. 21. KEITH HEUMILLER The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message was at the heart of a multicultural, multifaceted celebration Jan. 21 as the Red Bank Community Collaborative Committee and the Pilgrim Baptist Church in Red Bank sponsored a commemoration in his honor.
More than 150 residents, local dignitaries and students gathered at the Shrewsbury Avenue church for the event, which featured music, readings, dance and commemorative videos honoring King’s life work as a civil rights leader.
Dr. James Harris, president of the New Jersey NAACP, delivered the keynote address, which called on attendees both young and old to keep working for change.
“Dr. King was not dreaming. He was an activist,” said Harris, the recently retired associate dean of students at Montclair University. “He didn’t get stabbed because he was talking smack; he got stabbed because he was trying to change the culture of this country.”
Harris referred to the 1958 stabbing in Harlem during a book signing.
Harris — speaking after students from Red Bank Regional High School, Red Bank Middle School, Red Bank Charter School and Brookdale Community College performed and received awards for their themed essays — said the state’s youngsters should be the source of our communities’ greatest hopes and the focus of our greatest concerns.
“Younger people are having less a problem with racial integration and social integration than the older folks,” Harris said.
“It may very well be that the school system is one of the few places where we truly have students interacting across race and ethnicity. That means we really need to support the public schools.”
Harris cited certain NAACP initiatives — such as its vehement opposition to a state voucher program that gives money to students in underperforming schools so they can attend private or parochial institutions — as modern-day extensions of King’s advocacy for social justice and true racial equality. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954, he said, was a firm message that separation is inherently unequal.
Due to pronounced economic disparity across the state’s nearly 600 public school districts, however, Harris said a form of segregation is still alive and well in 2013.
“So we get a Newark. We get an Asbury Park. We get a Camden. We get a Pleasantville,” he said. “Take the 30 poorest school districts in New Jersey. Those 30 of the 598 or so educate almost half of all the African-American and Latino students in the state. This state is becoming more segregated, not less.”
Other contemporary issues faced by black Americans, including unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and gang-related violence, are just as beleaguering and destructive as many of the issues faced by King and his African-American peers in the 1960s.
“We are losing more black kids every day than we lost in [Newtown] Connecticut,” he said, referring to the Dec. 14 elementary school shooting that claimed 26 lives. “I would appeal to us as church people to make sure that our young boys and girls feel that somebody cares more than the gang members, so that they don’t have to go that way.”
Harris said the best way to continue King’s legacy and improve the lives of minorities in America is to focus on the nation’s children, improve conditions in our schools, and take the time to teach young people positive skills and social attitudes.
Pointing out the director of the Red Bank Middle School band, a young white man, Harris said even something as simple as teaching a child to play an instrument can make all the difference in the world.
“That young man is passionate. I would guess that he doesn’t care what race or gender or sexual orientation his members have. He wants to teach them to play music.
“Did you see who got the top prizes in the essays?” he added. “It was mostly multiracial. So let’s stop racially profiling our own kids … Our kids are the most creative kids anywhere in the world. If you give them a chance to show you, they will excel. But it calls for high expectations and support. Can we commit to that this afternoon? Can we give our kids what they deserve?”
Nearly 20 area organizations partnered to produce the service, including Lunch Break; the Community YMCA; and the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education (CHHANGE) at Brookdale Community College.
Following the service, which concluded with the speakers, student representatives and attendees linking arms and singing “We Shall Overcome,” CHHANGE Executive Director Dale Daniels said her organization was proud to be involved in the celebration.
“I think these things need to be taught more, but today kids learn them in so many different ways,” she said. “There are all these heroes in the community who are all preaching the same things, if you will: diversity and equality and justice for everyone. And I think you saw that in the program today.”
Rabbi Sally Priesand, the first female rabbi to be ordained in the United States, led the crowd in a “Litany of Commemoration” during the service, reading off a testimonial to Dr. King’s life and work.
After the event, Priesand said the cultural, religious and social diversity exhibited by the speakers and participants in the day’s proceedings should not be taken for granted.
“Without Martin Luther King, we wouldn’t be able to celebrate that diversity in the same way we did today,” she said.
“Because of Martin Luther King and others like him, we live in a community that is much different than when we grew up. My guess is that for kids today, they don’t even think about it. They just accept it.”
Priesand said she was happy to celebrate the life of a man who never stopped fighting for equality.
“The 50th anniversary of the ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the fact that the president used Martin Luther King’s Bible and Abraham Lincoln’s Bible to take the oath on — symbols are important,” she said.
“We always have to teach these lessons, because there is always a new generation to teach them to. We always have an opportunity to get better. All of us.”