Spirited affair offers timless messages of hope!
by S. Rotan Hale
On a cold and somewhat blustery morning Monday, January 19 the Roanoke Alumni Chapter of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCA&T) presented its 27th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast.
Tanisha Nash as MC led the program held before a packed crowd in the conference hall at Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center. The celebration is traditionally attended by a who’s who of local officials joined by many area residents who look forward to this annual affair and the inspiration it generates.
Two spirited selections, one appropriately entitled “I am Free, Thank the Lord I am Free” were performed by the North Carolina A&T Fellowship Gospel Choir that brought the house to their feet and church was on at the conference center.
Rev. David Jones, pastor, Williams Memorial Baptist Church in northwest, got things heated up with an extremely relevant presentation focused on the “social aspects of the gospel,” according to Dr. King’s point of view.
Raising one of Dr. King’s many quotes Rev. Jones said ‘“the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true intelligence.”’
Rev. Jones, a consummate minister of depth himself, continued through his well-thought-out discourse attesting to the greatness of Martin Luther King, his unparalleled legacy and how he stressed the importance of education.
Rev. Jones rattled off a host of Dr. King’s high-level appointments and various notable accomplishments. Pointing to the miraculous matriculation path King led Jones said, “just sum it all up, King enrolled in Morehouse College at age 15, graduated at 19, graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary at the age of 22 and earned his PhD in Systematic Theology at the age of 26. He was dead by the age of 39. He didn’t have time to waste.”
Fearlessly addressing the most pressing issue facing America and the world, Rev. Jones, referring to these troubling times said, “like Dr. King we don’t have time to waste. Today we live in a nation that is actually dismantling the Department of Education. We live in a time where the powers that be want to return us to a society where our personal, communal, mental and spiritual safety is subject to violent oppression at the whim of an egotistical immoral autocrat (Trump).”
Although Rev. Jones masterfully continued his profound attack on the evils of the present administration – understood by many as the greatest threat to democracy itself – he was actually the first of two speakers to bring a powerful and uplifting message of hope.
As keynote speaker, Bishop Adrian Starks of World Victory International Christian Center, Greensboro, NC. took this inspiring program to another level speaking on what he termed “The Unfinished Work.”
Carefully etching his words, Starks first focused on Dr. King’s challenge to America considering the dreadful racial tone of that era leading up to the 60’s – at the peak of the Civil Rights Era.
“Dr. King offered America no comfortable analysis of herself nor a convenient comfort as we consider her legacy. He (King) offered an honest and demanding one (analysis). He did not ask the nation to admire his dream. Today he asks us to finish it,” said Starks eloquently pacing himself through his remarks mostly written.
He proceeded pointing to the fact that “a lot of time has passed but not nearly enough progress has been made,” and quoting Dr. King, he said ‘“legislation can change behavior but it can not change the heart. Laws are necessary to restrain the heartless.”’
Clarifying the point of his talk, Starks aimed his message toward “the tension between law and love, between policy and conscience, between what we have passed and what we have yet to become.”
He spoke of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and how it theoretically intended to dismantle legal segregation in public accommodations. “The Act shifted the nation’s moral imagination,” he stated. “It changed the law but it could not convert the soul of a nation,” (i.e. steeped in racial indignation).
Continuing his bold unmitigated assault, Starks railed against those things King termed “the giant triplets of racism, poverty and war,” and referred to the Civil Right Act as being gold plated (i.e. brilliant on the surface but leaving deeper immoral structures intact.)
Starks referred to Dr. King as a”theologian of liberation” deeply convinced that injustice was not only illegal but sinful and is based against the thought that “God is always found on the side of those struggling for dignity, freedom and life,” he said during one of several moments that triggered applause from the truth-thirsty crowd.
Led by the spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “dream” of a better world, together Rev. David Jones and Bishop Adrian Starks brilliantly broke down a multitude of elements that have historically promoted the ongoing systematic dismantling of justice in America – the very thing King fought so tirelessly against. By all accounts both dynamic presentations serve as beacons of hope that even Dr. King would have been proud of – empowering messages that equip us as we face the troubles of our world together.
Following tradition, the program closed as everyone joined in singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” aka the Negro National Anthem.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
