Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 21, 1992 TAG: 9201210301
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE MEETINGS HONOR KING
With words, with music and with candlelight, Martin Luther King was remembered Monday night in Roanoke on the commemoration of his 63rd birthday.At Hollins College, about 50 people held a silent candlelight march around the school's quad after local black playwright Greta Evans gave a dramatic reading on the slain civil rights leader's legacy.
At High Street Baptist Church in Northwest Roanoke, about 200 people paid somber homage to King in song with, "Let's Keep the Dream Alive," written and performed by Roanoker Franklin Riles, "That's Why My Heart is Filled With Praise," sung by youth soloist Robert Addison and "Come and Go to That Land Where I'm Bound," performed by Men of Distinction, a Roanoke gospel group.
In addition, the Rev. Vernie Bolton, the pastor at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, spoke on the importance of family, education, economic development and church in black America.
At both ceremonies, they also sang the black national anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." At Hollins, it was accompanied by a slide presentation depicting the black plight from the days of slavery and the reign of the Ku Klux Klan through the civil rights movement.
At both observances, speakers urged people to continue King's struggle for non-violent social change.
In her dramatic reading, Evans said that when King was shot in 1968, his work was passed onto future generations.
"You and I inherited his fight for justice for one and for all," she said, adding that it would have been King's hope that his supporters would continue to march in his absence.
"Has anybody here seen Martin?" she asked rhetorically. Her answer: Yes, in the old woman who saw King marching in Selma, Ala., smiling and singing, "We Shall Overcome."
To the woman, that event meant she could lift her head and "stop saying yes sir, when I mean no!" said Evans, director of community affairs for WSLS-TV.
Yes, also, she continued, King still can be seen in today's poor, in the faces of teen-age parents "robbed of their youth," in the ghettos "bombed out by drugs and violence," and the millions of starving people all over the world.
At High Street Baptist Church, keynote speaker Bolton called King the "drum major" of justice in the shadow of discrimination that can destroy the self-esteem of others.
To overcome that destruction and racial bias, he said families must come together and stay together and family members must support each other.
He emphasized the importance of education, encouraging children to enter the sciences and other fields where the next century of leaders will come from.
He said that by doing so, future black generations can take a much greater role in owning businesses and the economy.
And he said the role of the church will be to promote these values and act as an advocate for the overall black community - a stand that King also took in his life as a minister and civil rights leader.