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Mostly Cloudy Religious leaders revisit Dr. King’s dream
See more photos from the event here.
Through prayer, poetry, song and speech, local religious leaders honored the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, the famed Civil Rights leader, at the Valley Stream Presbyterian Church on Monday afternoon.
The Valley Stream Religious Council hosted the event for the third straight year. A collection of ministers, rabbis and other men and women of the cloth were joined by about 50 people to pay tribute to the man responsible for bringing equality into the forefront of discussion a half-century ago.
Several speakers recited pieces of King’s famed “I Have a Dream” speech, made in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, following a march on Washington. Musical selections included aptly named “I Have a Dream” and “We Shall Overcome.”
The keynote speaker was the Rev. Katherine Brooks, pastor of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in New Rochelle, whose passionate words inspired the crowd. She said there are still many problems with racism and inequality in society, and cited the higher incarceration rates among Black citizens.
“Fifty years later, we have not realized Dr. King’s dream that his four little children would one day live in a nation where they would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” she said.
Brooks explored the way in which human beings judge each other, saying they often make assumptions based on someone’s appearance because that is what is most visible and easiest to understand. “We look at the outsides, because, bottom line, the outsides is all that is available for us to see,” she said. “Human beings cannot perceive the depths of one another’s hearts… The only part of other people that we see is the part that they choose to show us. So we do judge by outward appearance. That’s our only opportunity.”
She added that if Dr. King had a say in the way his memory is celebrated, he would want more than just his life and legacy remembered, and his speeches recited. It is action he wanted, Brooks explained, and action that he took during his 39 years on Earth.
