Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 16, 1995 TAG: 9501170097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In the spirit of Martin Luther King, a Hopewell minister Sunday urged people of all colors to "wake up" and pay attention.
"A lot of people are asleep, even in 1995," said Charles Pender, president of The Hopewell Action Council. The council is a chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was founded by King.
Pender was in Roanoke to speak at the Concerned Citizens for Justice annual banquet in honor of King, a Baptist minister who led a national fight for blacks' civil rights in the 1960s. King was assassinated April 4, 1968. His birthday, which was Sunday, is celebrated as Lee-Jackson-King Day in Virginia and is a government holiday today.
In an interview before Sunday's meeting, Pender expressed concern that Gov. George Allen is among the things that require the closest watching. Pender said Allen is moving the state backward.
``I won't call Allen `governor,' because he hasn't governed,'' he said.
Allen argues that the private sector will step into the gap left by his proposed cuts in government programs.
"Did he get a commitment from private business?" Pender asked.
Pender knows about stepping into the gap, he said, because that's what the SCLC does. It helps get attention for issues of discrimination against blacks and whites, he said.
Those issues include getting the courts to treat blacks and whites equally and ensuring that women are treated properly at work.
Pender, a Democrat, worked in a black ministers' network that drummed up support for former Gov. Doug-las Wilder. He also campaigned for Sen. Charles Robb, but says he's getting disillusioned with his own party because it has not given black citizens a large enough role.
Pender is owner of Anti-Termite & Insect Control in Hopewell, a member of the Hopewell Planning Commission, chaplain at a hospital and pastor of Glimpse of Heaven Ministries.
He also writes poetry and produces inspirational literature and tapes on a variety of topics, including finance; he sells the tapes through the mail.
In his talk before the Roanoke group, he used the dialect of old-style black preachers to ask: "Is you got 'ligion?"
If the answer is "yes," then become an aware citizen, he said.
by CNB