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January 17, 2005
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| Leaders such as Senators Norm Coleman and Mark Dayton locked arms at the head of a march in St. Paul on Monday. (MPR Photo/Michael Khoo) |
St. Paul, Minn. — The breath of marchers along St. Paul's Marshall Ave., sent up clouds of steam as they chanted the hymn most associated with Martin Luther King Jr. The march ended at Concordia University, where Gov. Tim Pawlenty told those gathered that King changed life in this country by living and dying for the truth.
"He told us freedom for others was a cause worth giving your life for. He reminded us that we value safety and comfort too highly compared to the things that really count and really last," he said.
Pawlenty says such truth-tellers still exist but others need the ears to hear them.
About 2,000 people packed into the Minneapolis Convention Center for the annual Martin Luther King Holiday Breakfast. National Public Radio Senior Correspondent Juan Williams invoked two fictional Minnesota characters as he warned against regarding King as an icon of American culture.
He says King should first be remembered for his ability to sacrifice his own needs for the sake of a just cause.
"I'm not here to talk about the Green Giant. I'm not here to talk about Betty Crocker. I'm not here to talk about any icon. I'm here to talk about a living, breathing, bleeding, loving Dr. King," Williams said.
Williams is author of the best-selling book, Eyes on the Prize and a notable biography of Thurgood Marshall.
Williams calls King "an average human" who rose up in his moment to meet the challenge, even though he was spit on, stoned, and jailed.
"That's the Dr. King that lives here in Minnesota, that lives whenever you, whenever I, take a risk in the name of justice," Williams said.
The breakfast meeting started earlier than the typical school day for Thandisizwe Jackson-Nisan, who studies performing arts at the FAIR School in Robbinsdale. She is the Hennepin County Miss Teen International and has a busy day of gatherings and performances planned. She says the holiday is more than a time when banks are closed.
"I know we get out of school on January 19 and do the breakfasts and the luncheons and different things like that, but I think we as African American people and any other cultures should celebrate black history and Dr. Martin Luther King every single day," she said.
More than any other American holiday, the time set aside for Martin Luther King invites assessments of the progress the country has made addressing the difficult subject of race.
Don Samuels, one of two black Minneapolis City Council members, says a day to mark King's birthday is a good time to ask why some people don't reap any benefit, even in prosperous times.
"So many people and individuals and groups have done well, but then there's some who are left behind -- the intractably poor. People who were so far behind before the civil rights movement they haven't been able to get the traction to make any forward momentum," he said.
Samuels says he's heartened, however, to witness the large turnout of so many different cultures to recognize a man who, just a few decades ago, was jailed for standing against what was then the law of the land.
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