Men who experienced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and death provided unique perspectives about the legendary leader for students from Russellville and Logan County high schools as well as members of the community Friday.
Among those speaking at the Historic Logan County Courthouse were Charles Neblett, who was involved in movements led by Dr. King in the South, and Dr. Kelly Miller Smith, who attended the assassinated peacemaker’s funeral in Atlanta.
Additionally they were urged to ‘endure’ and to attain high levels of education by Dr, Rama Johnson, a young African American woman who has attained two advanced degrees and a significant leadership position in government.
Just as President Barack Obama called on Americans to endure during his second inaugural address Monday, Dr. Johnson told students to “sustain without yielding” and to work toward leveling the playing field in areas of education, employment and heath care.
“We all have the ability to rise by lifting others who are income challenged or academically challenged. By enduring, you empower others,” she said.
She noted that President Obama—an African American who appropriately took his second Oath of Office on the official national holiday honoring Dr. King Monday--includes the importance of good education in most of his speeches. She challenged the young people assembled to “take challenging courses in math, science and foreign languages. Read a newspaper every day.”
She talked about Dr. King and what he endured. “I can hear Dr. King still shouting to you: ‘Go on and endure. Don’t settle for one degree. Go on to graduate or professional school. Finish strong and finish proud. The return to your community and help someone else. Give back.”
Johnson said that she was the youngest of seven children and never knew her father. They lived in public housing, reared by a mother who ended her formal education in the tenth grade.
After being overcome with emotion temporarily, she said, “She was one of the strongest and most giving individuals I have ever known. She would provide food for people who had none. She would call those who had experienced loss. The measure of a person is not what you have but what you give to others.”
“Mama’s an extension of Dr. King’s dream. She had a ripple effect. Her medical supplies after her death from cancer were sent to a little girl in Haiti, which helped her live,” Dr. Johnson said. “Later her surgeon spoke to a conference of students as a result of his having known her.”
Dr Johnson, who is the first chief diversity officer of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, took a trip to an African orphanage in Zambia, where she was able to help those in need. That is part of “Mama’s ripple effect,” she said.
“Education is the most powerful weapon to fight injustice,” Johnson proclaimed. She also quoted Nelson Mandela in saying, “After climbing a great hill, one finds there are many more hills to climb.”
While waiting for the arrival of Dr. Miller Smith, Charles Neblett, who organizes the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Unity Walk each year along with his wife Marvinia, led the group in singing. He taught them some of the songs which were part of the Freedom Movement of the 1960s.
That was appropriate, since he was one of the original Freedom Singers, who accompanied Martin Luther King on his mission and who spent time in a number of jails in the South along with Dr. King. Neblett was also in Washington 50 years ago this year when Martin Luther King strayed from his prepared remarks before the estimated 200,000 people assembled when singer Mahalia Jackson cried out, "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" The famous “I Have a Dream” resulted.
One of the songs Neblett taught the group was:”My dog love your dog and your dog love my dog. I’m talking about white dog and I’m talking about black dog.” The song goes on to urge people to treat each other like those dogs..
He also talked about one of the marches he was on in Alabama between Selma and Montgomery and a message in song directed toward the state’s belligerent governor, George Wallace. The chorus says, “Gov. Wallace, you can never jail us all. Governor Wallace, segregation, yeah, about to fall.” He remembers that after Wallace was reported to have said, “We have enough jails to put all the colored people and their mamas in jail,” people from all the nation engulfed the state to join the march.
“I looked over the crowd and said, ‘Wallace, you haven’t got enough jails for all these people,’" Neblett recalls. Thus the Freedom Singers’ song in answer to the governor was born.
Dr. Kelly Miller Smith Jr. is pastor of First Baptist Capitol Hill in Nashville, a congregation which his father served before him. His dad was so respected and so impactful in the Freedom Movement in Tennessee that one of the most traveled entrances to Nashville, the Jefferson Street Bridge, is now the Dr. Kelly Miller Bridge.
“My dad knew Dr. King very well. He served on the board of SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Dr. King headed,” the speaker told the group. “The church I now pastor was where leaders met to plan boycotts in Nashville. Dr. King preached at our church when he was in Nashville.”
While Dr. Johnson had spoken from a prepared manuscript, Dr. Miller Smith spoke extemporaneously without notes. He explained to the group why boycotts were necessary. He talked about “colored water fountains, colored entrances, and dirty colored restrooms.” His family was part of boycotts of Nashville’s leading department stores, Castner-Knott, Cain-Sloan, and Harvey’s. He also told them how effective the Montgomery Bus Boycott was after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man.
He told them about attending a wrestling match with a friend’s family at the Tennessee State Fairgounds and having to sit in the colored section. “My dad said I couldn’t go back until I could sit wherever I wanted,” he remembers. “Later when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Law,” my sister went to first grade in what had been an all-white school. I was bused across town to a previously all-white school.”
In between, he attended Dr. King’s funeral in Atlanta after the civil rights leader had been assassinated in Memphis. He was eight years old at the time. His dad showed him then the college he would attend less than a decade later.
Dr. Miller Smith also talked about the importance of education. His mother taught at Tennessee State University. His dad taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Dr. Miller Smith has three degrees from Morehouse College in Atlanta.
“Strive to do what you want to do. You can’t just say you want to be a nurse, a social worker, a psychologist, a pharmacist…, you have to work toward it.”
He challenged the students to take the necessary steps for success. “I dare you to dream, to have determination, and to be willing to make a difference.”
As has been the case for several years, Mt. Herman Baptist Church pastor Lee Roy Fishback served as master of ceremonies. Kesi Neblett, an RHS student who is in her second year at the prestigious Gatton Academy at WKU, again introduced the keynote speaker.
The group had marched from Bank Street Church to the courthouse for the 27th consecutive year.