Valley MLK celebration recalls ‘50 Years of Progress’

WASILLA — Decades of progress have brought the United States closer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a unified nation, but there is still work to be done.

That was the message shared Valley politicians and speakers Monday afternoon at the 12th annual Mat-Su Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation Celebration. With its theme “50 Years of Progress,” celebration organizer Melvin Sage-El said the last half century has seen much progress for racial and social equality. He referenced King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech delivered in August 1963.

“The irony of that day in the March on Washington (is) it culminated on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and that’s where all the day’s events took place — the speeches, the singing,” Sage-El said. “In Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, he mentions that here we are on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where 100 years prior, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. And the irony is, here they were 100 years later fighting for the same things that the Emancipation Proclamation was supposed to have done.”

Now five decades removed from the March on Washington, ‘what does that prove for the last 50 years?” Sage-El said.

The passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act “led to the destruction of the Jim Crow Laws, segregation, inequality in the workplace and also quality in both,” he said. “Americas has its first black president, still elected in office, a multitude of firsts in everything from education, law, athletics, entertainment, medicine, business and the military.”

But there is still room for improvement, Sage-El said.

“Fifty years later, we still have issues,” he said. “We have issues with poverty, with unequal wages for women. …. And in many parts of our country, we have inequitable funding for primary and secondary education. While change has been significant, I feel there is still work to be done.”

That’s a sentiment shared by representatives of national and local governments. Mat-Su Borough Mayor Larry DeVilbiss likened the legacy of King to the story of Joseph in Genesis of the Bible.

“Look, this dreamer is coming,” he said, quoting the passage. “Come therefore and let us now kill him and cast him into some pit. And we shall say some wild beast has devoured him. We shall see what will become of his dreams.”

The lesson, he said, is that while society may not embrace dreamers during their time, those who are brave enough to advocate for those dreams are necessary in making progress.

“We need dreamers,” he said. “A society without people of vision is much poorer. Proverbs says that without a vision, people perish, and that’s what a dream is, it’s a vision — a vision for the future.”

Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright says there is one common bond that transcends all races in the United States — they’re all Americans.

“How is (progress) measured? I can’t stand here and begin to tell you what it means to be black in America,” he said. “I really can’t even define what it is to be white.”

As a soldier serving during the Vietnam War, Rupright said the military represented much the same melting pot America had become.

“I served in the Vietnam War with Americans,” he said. “The difference in that experience is they were kids from all over the U.S., whether they be white, black, Native, Hispanic, oriental — as well as a number of foreign kids who joined in order to attain our G.I. Bill with school and citizenship and a change of life. We were all jumbled up and expected to work together as a team for our own survival, as well as the comrade next to you.”

It wasn’t perfect, Rupright said, but in the end, “we were all Americans.”

Probably the most intangible mark of progress over the past 50 years is with individual thinking regarding racial and social equality, said Palmer Mayor DeLena Johnson.

“First and foremost, progress requires a change in individual thinking and it manifests itself in providing opportunities for everyone,” she said. “It takes hope to realize the opportunities you are given.”

Contact Greg Johnson at 352-2269 or greg.johnson@frontiersman.com.