Speakers Challenge Folks To Follow King Path

Martin Luther King asked America to be true to the huge promissory note it signed years ago.

At his birthday celebration in the Roundhouse on Monday, speakers challenged New Mexicans to deliver on that note – the Declaration of Independence’s guarantee of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness – in an event sponsored by the Santa Fe branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

King would have been 83 had he not been assassinated in 1968.

The Santa Fe-based West African drumming group Agalu opened the ceremonies with the heartbeat of Africa echoing through the building.

“Everything that is African begins with the call of the drum,” said Doris Fields, MLK Jr. chair for the Santa Fe NAACP.

Two-time champion of the National Poetry Slam Hakim Bellamy praised students at Albuquerque’s Amy Biehl Charter High School for choosing service projects over video games on the day of the national holiday.

“Following him means service,” Bellamy said to about 200 people gathered inside the Capitol. “We wait until we have more money to give, we wait until we have more time to give. We don’t always get more time. Dr. King was around just 38 years and he did a lot with a little. He was convinced of this idea of creative altruism.”

King was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his work to end racial segregation and discrimination through civil disobedience. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War, and a sanitation workers’ strike drew him to Memphis, where he was killed.

That year King organized a “Poor People’s Campaign” to address issues of economic justice. Bellamy likened that effort to the Occupy movement that sprung up around the country last year.

Besides King’s work, he cited the words of Mother Teresa.

“When a poor person dies of hunger, it does not happen because God does not care,” he said, quoting the Missionaries of Charity nun. “It happens because you or I don’t give them what they need.”

Bellamy challenged the audience to work to end hunger and homelessness.

“Every man must decide whether to work in the light or in the darkness of self-destruction,” he said.

Capital High School student John Serrano received the NAACP’s Community Service Award for his work in coaching younger students in basketball and football, as well as volunteering with the Santa Fe Boys and Girls Clubs. The award honors young people committed to uplifting the community, Fields said.

Jermaine Ledouix, 19, attended as the recipient of last year’s community service award for his volunteer work at Christus St. Vincent Hospital. Ledouix has been accepted into the B.A./M.D. program at the University of New Mexico. He wants to become a doctor.

“I really liked his speeches,” Ledouix said of King. “I like the power in his voice. I just got chills when I listened to it.”

Santa Fe NAACP board member Karen Finney said it had become a personal tradition to attend the annual ceremony. She said she had marched for Civil Rights in Wichita, Kan., although she never met King.

“I was coming of age then,” she said. “As a parent and grandparent, I shared his ideas with my children and grandchildren.”

Fields said 2012 marks the 103rd birthday of the NAACP, which began as a multiracial group.

“It is with grace, humility and peace that the Santa Fe branch comes together here,” she said. “Peace calls us to be free of strife and it allows us to walk in the path of Dr. King’s nonviolence.”