Celebrations: King’s message still relevant 50 years after death

Nearly half a century after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, people in the Tri-City area celebrated Monday the progress made in the civil rights movement and what they say still needs to be done.

The Patterson Civic Organization held its 2018 Annual MLK Celebration with a service at St. Luke Baptist Church and a march to Cherry Street Park.

The St. Mary Chapter of NAACP hosted its Dr. Martin L. King Jr. Celebration with a march from Morgan City City Hall to Mt. Zion Baptist Church. A service followed the march.

During the NAACP event, Program Chairman Reginald Weary said this year’s celebration of what would have been King’s 89th birthday is also a “commemorative year” in that King was assassinated in April 1968 almost 50 years ago.

“At 39 years of age, he had done so much to touch so many lives,” Weary said. “It’s up to us to keep that dream alive and keep pushing.”

Arlanda Williams, vice chancellor of workforce development and institutional advancement at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, was guest speaker at the Patterson event.

Williams is also a Terrebonne Parish councilwoman, an executive member of the Democratic National Committee and served as a super delegate for the 2016 presidential election.

“Dr. King and others led the pathway, but now we have turned that dream into a nightmare,” she said.

People have gotten comfortable to just listen to King’s message and not live it out, Williams said.

“It’s time for us to go from amen to action,” she said.

Action doesn’t mean destroying or killing one another as many communities are experiencing, she said.

“God is my brother. So that when I shake my brother’s hand, it doesn’t matter if he’s black or white. Together we’re going to make a difference,” Williams said.

Community members have confused the phrase, “I made it,” with, “I’ve got it made,” and should help those who are still struggling, she said.

“Now, because we’re eating steak, we want to forget the person that’s still eating Vienna sausage,” Williams said.

In 2008, “we changed the guard” with the election of President Barack Obama, and, in 2012, “we guarded the change,” by re-electing him, she said.

“In 2020, may change happen again,” Williams said.

Williams encouraged people to be like the third little pig in the story of “The Three Little Pigs” and build “a house of stone” so that the “big bad wolf” of suppression, oppression and depression can’t win.

At the Morgan City celebration, the Rev. T.J. Andrus was guest speaker. Andrus is an associate pastor at Faith Hope Christian Fellowship Church in Abbeville and St. Moses Baptist Church in Sorrell.

“We live in a time and in an age and in an era like never before,” Andrus said.

When people leave their homes each day to go to work, “it is not promised to you if you are going to return back home safe,” Andrus said.

Pastors are encouraged to hire security personnel for their churches “because on any given Tuesday afternoon, while you are having Bible study, someone may walk into your sanctuary with a loaded firearm and begin to shoot everyone present in the building,” he said.

“We live in a day and we live in an age where you can be watching your favorite film at the movie theater, and all of a sudden, alarms and sirens begin to sound in the center because someone has shot somebody else from a point blank range,” Andrus said.

But all of the troubles and trials that people go through today Jesus discussed in the Bible, and Jesus is the “anchor” that people need, he said.

St. Mary NAACP President Alfreida Edwards said during the service, “In order to keep our legacy going and (keep) the celebrations going, we must start bringing in younger people.”

Society is “in a state of difficulty right now,” but communities have overcome adversity before and continue to strive to do that today, Edwards said.