Annual MLK commemoration at Yale’s beautiful chapel has fiery racial and social justice voice Barber opining on King and the state of our fragile democracy. The evening starts off with Shades, a multicultural acapella group of students who perform Lift Every Voice and Sing and We Shall Overcome. Standards of the African-American church, the near capacity audience sways and mouths along to these renditions. Next up is Influence, a local poet and rapper who recites his piece on sanitation workers. The symbolism of black people as America’s “necessary but invisible” garbage men is compelling. Introduced by the Dean of Yale’s divinity school, we learn that Barber holds 10 honorary doctorates. He is a go to fixture on cable news and is an eloquent speaker on issues of race and justice. The theme was Martin’s final speech, fittingly in support of the Memphis sanitation workers strike. Barber said that King struggled with “America’s schizophrenia” citing many examples of moving one step forward and two steps back. It is impossible to ignore the orange mushroom cloud that was recently inaugurated. Barber said that Martin wouldn’t be content with having a “day” in his honor, his work ethic was his trademark. William drew some striking parallels from history, the Spanish flu was scapegoated and bungled much like the coronavirus. Voting rights, civil rights have both taken hits under recent and I’m sure future Republican administrations, Barber reminded us to perservere. He pleaded with us to “know who we are” as we navigate our way forward. The second Trump administration promises to be awful and ugly, seems that they know who they are. Barber closed his talk with a call for unity, urging attendees to approach the altar and join hands in solidarity. I’m sure King was smiling in heaven. One minor, but glaring error, had the Divinity Dean referencing Barber’s work with the NCAAP, an unfortunate case of CRD (clueless racial dyslexia) showing us that we still have work to do.
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