Publication Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Our Town: Keeping the dream alive
Our Town: Keeping the dream alive
(January 19, 2005) by Don Kazak
A lone saxophone player played softly as people filed into First United Methodist Church of Palo Alto Sunday afternoon to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
After several hundred people gathered, a choir composed of more than three dozen people from several churches, led by the Rev. Isaiah Jones of Covenant Presbyterian Church, sang powerfully during the 90-minute-long ceremony.
But it was the energy of a small, African-American boy that electrified the church and brought everyone to their feet.
Corey Vinegar, a third grader from Costano School in East Palo Alto, had to peer over the top of the speaker's pulpit to be seen. But he spoke clearly and confidently, reading a poem written about King, gesturing with his hands.
"This King stands tall," Vinegar read from the poem, raising his hands high as he read the line.
The congregation rose spontaneously in a standing ovation when he was finished.
LaDoris Cordell, Palo Alto City Councilwoman, a Stanford vice provost and master of ceremonies for the event, joked that she expected to see young Vinegar in the White House someday, or maybe on the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was the third year Cordell has MC'd the event -- which has been held since 1986, and since 1997 at First United Methodist -- during which people quietly pay homage to the late Civil Rights leader, slain in 1968.
King was an icon of the Civil Rights movement, but he belongs to all of us now.
Clayborne Carson, Stanford history professor and director of the Martin Luther King Papers Project at Stanford, was fittingly the keynote speaker on Sunday. In 1985, Carson was personally asked to direct the project by Coretta Scott King, King's widow. The fifth of 14 planned volumes of King's papers has just been published.
Carson told the story of a 15-year-old African-American girl who refused give up her seat to a white person on an Alabama bus nine months before Rosa Parks helped launch the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 -- and brought King to national prominence.
But the girl, Claudette Colvin, received no accolades at the time for her courage. "She was not hailed as a hero but was ostracized by her classmates," Carson said.
Colvin finally received some thanks last week, when she was honored by the King Papers Project at an event at Stanford. "We had the pleasure of seeing the joy on her face as she received two ovations," Carson said.
Carson noted that King understood early on that "he was product of a movement he did not initiate and did not control."
King continued to speak out for what he was believed was right. "It was King's conviction that injustice anywhere was a threat to justice everywhere," Carson said.
Sunday's event featured three generations from a local family speaking to what King meant to them.
Mabel Herring, a community volunteer and mother of Palo Alto City Councilwoman Hillary Freeman, noted how she had to push the Philadelphia school system to get her daughter into the best schools that mostly white students attended.
"Education is the key to freedom," she said of her determination. But the fight is not over: "The racism of the 1960s has become sophisticated, less blatant and more cunning," she added.
Freeman said her parents taught her about King and the ideals for which he stood. She said she "is committed to fight for those truths."
Austinn Freeman, Hillary's daughter, noted how King's "I Have a Dream" speech is now known universally.
"His name is synonymous with equality now," the younger Freeman said. But she noted that African-Americans are still targeted for racial profiling by police and hate crimes are still being committed against minorities.
"Although Dr. King's dream has been fulfilled to an extent, we still have a ways to go," she said.
Austinn is also the student body president at Palo Alto High School and has been accepted under Stanford's early decision program for next fall, where she will also continue her soccer-playing career.
Sunday's event closed with the congregation holding hands, swaying gently and singing, "We Shall Overcome," a song almost as familiar as King's dream.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be emailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
E-mail a friend a link to this story. | 
