MLK Day Speech 2025

Welcome to the MLK Celebration.  We are the Harris County Men’s Club and or motto is “Unity in the Community”.  We have directed and produced this event on MLK Day for more than 30 years.  We are delighted that so many of you have come to join in this celebration.  You know you can not have a party without people.

                    

We are here to remember the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was a driving force in the civil rights movement.  He was the cause of many of the laws that were passed to support equality in our country.  Dr. King gave many famous speeches and sermons in his lifetime, but the one everyone remembers is called the “I have a dream” speech.  In this speech there is a single sentence that follows me in my efforts to promote unity. 

It says;

 

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

 

Look around this room today.  We are fulfilling one of Dr. King’s dreams!  In our culture today there is much division, disrespect and anger.   You can pass laws that are aimed at forcibly remove discrimination from our systems but you cannot legislate respect, friendship and understanding.  I challenge you today, before you leave, to make one new friend and listen to them.  Their point of view may be different from yours but their point of view is just as important to them as yours is to you.  Try to understand since this one on one discourse is the only way I have found to defuse division and anger in our society and to create “Unity in the Community”

 

Thank you again for coming today; next up is our Master of Ceremonies Brother Collie Graddick

  MLK Day Speech 2024

I would like to take a few minutes today to talk about our history, our ancestors, and the importance of truth telling and then end with an invitation.

 

Dr. King said about the tumultuous Civil Rights Era, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

 

Hasn’t that been the tragedy of every era of our history? Not that there are bad people who do bad things but that there are basically good people who condone it either explicitly with their active consent or implicitly with their silence.

 

The idea that learning the truth about our history should make anyone feel ashamed in the present is wrongheaded.  We are not our ancestors. We are not granted special reward or punishment in the hereafter for having been born from a specific bloodline. Our ancestors were flawed; mine; yours; everyone’s. Future generations will likely say the same about us.

 

Despite the mistaken thinking of our State legislature, the reason we need to learn about bad things that were done by our forbearers is not to make anyone alive today feel guilty.  It is to remind us all that the past is indeed prologue. What does that mean? William Faulkner tells us: “The past is never dead; it isn’t even past.” The past keeps circling and coming around again and again. And we have to remember the bad things that CAN happen when there aren’t enough good people willing to stand against it. The point of history is neither to venerate nor anguish about the past but to learn from it to improve our future and that of our descendents.  

 

Often, the resistance to accepting the lessons of history is a rejection of the idea that anything systemic needs to be done to correct past wrongs; confusing the ideas that correcting a system to make it just is the same as laying blame, when it obviously is not.

 

We are all responsible for not accepting and maintaining an unjust system, and for instead… building a society that is just for everyone, to make sure that all citizens have equal access to the help and opportunities they deserve; the kind of society that Dr. King envisioned in the Beloved Community.

 

The solution to injustice of one kind is not to perpetuate injustices of other kinds but to ensure justice for everyone. We just need to be sure that we don’t repeat or, as Dr. King said condone through our silence, the bad things that have been done in our history AND that we help build a society where the bad things of the past are mitigated and new bad things are less likely to happen.  Our ancestors being flawed only makes us flawed if we defend or make excuses for them and their misdeeds out of a misguided sense of loyalty. They were who they were. And we are who we are; hopefully better, having learned from their mistakes. If we can learn from both the good the bad they did, whenever the topic turns to our history; whether our country’s, our state’s, or THIS community’s, we can have the courage to speak the truth to ourselves and each other. And that truth will not only set us free… it has the power to heal us.

 

So, here is my invitation: You are all invited to an information and discussion session about the Harris Co. Community Remembrance Project at St. Nicholas Church on Sunday afternoon, Feb. 25 at 4:00. The topic will be the plan for a memorial park in Hamilton to honor people in our county whose lives were taken through a systematic program of terror and intimidation from 1861 to 1947. In partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery it is a truth telling project with the power to heal. That power comes from everyone here and everyone in Harris County who believes in the Beloved Community. The larger the coalition we can build the more healing power we can generate.

Please, pick up an information card at the door as you leave today. Thank you and enjoy the rest of this great day of celebration and fellowship in honor of Dr. King!