Racism: Altered but not eradicated

Clark County

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Sadie Lawler, center, and Brenda Matthews enjoy a comment by speaker Lindon Dodd while attending the Martin Luther King Jr. Day memorial service at Northside Church of Christ in Jeffersonville. Staff photo by C.E. Branham
Makayla Wise and a cappella group Made New performed at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day memorial service in Jeffersonville. Staff photo by C.E. Branham
Lindon Dodd
Mike Moore
Rep. Steve Stemler

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January 17, 2012

Public gathers to honor Dr. Martin Luther King’s work

By DAVID A. MANN David.Mann@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Tue Jan 17, 2012, 12:37 AM EST

JEFFERSONVILLE — Realizing the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. is a fight that’s not yet done.

It will never be finished.

And it remains an ongoing concern.

Those were the words of Lindon Dodd, a weekly columnist for the News and Tribune who spoke Monday at Jeffersonville’s Martin Luther King Memorial Service. It’s the 28th year in which residents from across Clark County have come together to pay homage to the fallen civil rights leader.

“We are grateful for the life of Martin Luther King Jr.,” said State Rep. Steve Stemler, D-Jeffersonville, who gave the invocation at Monday’s event. “We’re grateful for the legacy he left us to build upon.”

The service was proceeded by a motorcade which led participants from Jeffersonville City Hall, on Quartermaster Court, to Northside Church of Christ, on 10th Street.

Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore said King is best honored when we pursue the dream that he envisioned during a 17-minute long speech in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963. Much has changed in the 43 years since that defining moment in American history but Moore acknowledged there’s still work to be done.

“It starts by bridging the gap between white and black, rich and poor, educated and uneducated,” he said. “It’s up to us to work each and every day to make that dream a reality.”

The nature of the racism King fought against was a subject of Monday’s discourse, as well.

Dodd recalled receiving a forwarded email, a few days after President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, that featured a cartoon depicting a watermelon patch on the White House lawn.

“I am not a racist,” he responded to the email.

That response, he said, was met by others who claimed they weren’t racist either and said that it was only a joke. He used the tale to illustrate the way racism had changed in America since King’s time.

Back then, racists wore uniforms, he said.

The heart of Dodd’s speech focused on the idea that King was a regular man. He urged that admirers not place him on a pedestal and say that what he did can’t be duplicated. To do so takes hope away from a younger generation who aspire to change the world as well, he said.

“What he was was a leader. He was the one who reached out and made people’s hearts change,” Dodd said.

King became a symbol for the civil rights movement when he became president of the Montgomery, Ala., Improvement Association on Dec. 5, 1955. In that post, he called for nonviolent protests against racism and poverty.

On April 4, 1968, at the age of 39, he was shot and killed as he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. He’d been there to help lead sanitation workers in a protest against low wages and intolerable working conditions.

James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the assassination. Then in 1999, a Memphis jury concluded that Memphis restaurateur Loyd Jowers along with federal, Tennessee and Memphis officials conspired to kill King, as well.

A monument to him, near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., opened to the public in August.