[ed.note:
BlackNET Member Dr. LEVI WATKINS, hosts the 2013 Martin Luther King
Day Celebration at Johns HOPKINS University Medical Center.]
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Commemoration
BALTIMORE, MD – The civil rights movement has always really been about economics say the spiritual descendants of Martin Luther King, Jr. And in one of history’s ironic twists, the official celebration of Dr. King’s birthday occasionally falls on Benjamin Franklin’s actual birth date, January 17th.
Johns Hopkins’ annual commemoration celebrates the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. by honoring community service by members of JHU and JHH/JHHS who demonstrate the same spirit of volunteerism and citizenship that characterized the life of Dr. King. Throughout his life, Dr. King had a deep faith in the accomplishments of people working together for themselves and for their nation.
The 2013 Johns Hopkins Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration will take place on Friday, January 11, 2013 at noon in the Turner Auditorium on the East Baltimore campus. In addition to the presentation of the Community Service Awards, Benjamin Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP, will speak.
Johns Hopkins Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration Celebration keynote speakers have included:
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2012- Martin Luther King, III 2011 - Shirley Sherrod, Regina Benjamin 2010 - Lou Gossett Jr. 2009 - Lynn Whitfield, Congressman Elijah E. Cummings 2008 - Levi Watkins 2007 - Maya Angelou 2006 - James Earl Jones 2005 - Rev. Jesse Jackson 2004 - Cicely Tyson 2003 - Danny Glover & Harry Belafonte, Ideals Award Recipient 2002 - Coretta Scott King 2001 - John Lewis and Dick Gregory, Ideals Award Recipient 2000 - Taylor Branch 1999 - Julian Bond |
- BlackVAULT -
MLK:
REMEMBER THE PROMISE?
OPEN SOURCE - MEMBER
CONTRIBUTIONS
By William Scott Malone
BALTIMORE, MD – The civil rights movement has always
really been about economics say the spiritual descendants of Martin Luther
King, Jr. And in one of history’s ironic twists, the official celebration of
Dr. King’s birthday occasionally falls on Benjamin Franklin’s actual birth
date, January 17th.
As one of Dr. King’s remaining political heirs, the Rev.
Jesse Jackson, pointed out recently at a Johns Hopkins University remembrance,
the fulfillment of the economic promise of emancipation that Dr. King had
sought before his assassination in 1968 has still to be met. The irony of the
birth dates derives from a newly published book about Benjamin Franklin, which
portrays the founding father and long-time abolitionist hero as a slave owner
whose initial printing house fortune was derived in large measure from
classified advertisements for slave trading and escaped slaves.
In other words, it has always been about economic
promise.
For the 243 years of abject slavery between the first
American slaves and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Rev. Jackson
told the 23rd Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration in
Baltimore last week, African Americans were “issued a promissory note.”
An economic promissory note, said Rev. Jackson, that Dr.
King had long labeled “past due.”
“That is not about color or culture, but character.”
Jackson told an overflow audience at Johns Hopkins. Rev. Jackson, who was at
Dr. King’s side when he was slain in Memphis, recalled Dr. King’s last birthday
in 1968. Dr. King held meetings all that day with labor advocates, civil rights
leaders, and Hispanic activists about developing a new economic approach to
alleviating poverty for all downtrodden Americans. “They brought in a cake and
we sang happy birthday,” Rev. Jackson said. “And then we got back to work.”
The colorful and sometimes controversial Rev. Jackson is
more noted these days for his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and its efforts to hold
major corporations to higher standards of accountability on various fairness
issues. During his speech, he called for universal health care, a decent living
wage and equal opportunity for Americans of all races, creeds and religions.
The annual King remembrance, conceived and hosted by King
family friend Dr. Levi Watkins, Jr., has become a twenty-three year tradition
at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Dr. Watkins, an associate dean and
professor of cardiac surgery at the university’s school of medicine, is most
widely known outside of his civil rights work as the pioneer developer of the
implantable heart defibrillator, first used in 1980, and currently in use by
Vice President Dick Cheney.
In his earlier days, Dr. Watkins had been the first black
graduate from Vanderbilt Medical School and in 1978 the first African American
chief resident of cardiac surgery at Hopkins. Over the years, Dr. Watkins’ MLK
commemoration guest speakers have included a pantheon of civil rights leaders,
foreign and domestic: Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, Martin
Luther King III, Mayor Andrew Young, Harry Belafonte, and poet Maya Angelou.
This year, Dr. Watkins was himself the surprise recipient
of the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Award, to the delight of his
visiting 86-year old mother. Dr. Watkins became suddenly distracted near the
end of the ceremonies as his own contributions began to be praised by the chief
of the Hopkins Medical Center, Dr. Edward D. Miller, who noted that Watkins had
helped change the face of the university since his arrival in 1970 as a
surgical intern.
Unfortunately, even the present day economics of
remembering the civil rights period have turned sadly ironic. The 1987
multi-award winning documentary chronicle of the civil rights movement, “Eyes
on the Prize,” cannot be rebroadcast or reissued on DVD because of expired
copyright licenses on stock footage and music employed to evoke the period. The
spiritual heirs of the film series’ producer, the late Henry Hampton, can
barely even afford to calculate how much it would take to renew all the license
agreements with the major networks, film studios, still photo archives and
record companies, necessary to “clear” the film series. Most of the original
licensing fees were for five years or less, and there were hundreds of them. It
is estimated that it will cost at a minimum $500,000.
Perhaps it is indeed always about economics, as Doctors
Franklin, King and Watkins have long pointed out, and as the Rev. Jackson
continues to remind us.
Scott Malone with “The
RAOULs” in front of SCOTUS, circa 1978. © 2012 MindBENDER, Inc. - All WORLDWIDE - Rights Reserved
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