“Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last”. I
was only 7 years old when Martin Luther King made this famous speech on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I do remember many of the news reports on his
work and clearly remember the news bulletin of his death on April 4, 1968.
Martin Luther King raised the consciousness of the nation with his plea for
civil rights and his commitment to non-violence. While MLK galvanized the work
on civil rights, there was a legion of individuals, some well-known, such as
Rosa Parks, the Freedom Riders, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), others who have faded from history’s spotlight. Even in my
home town of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada, a courageous black
businesswomen, Viola Desmond, refused to leave the “whites only” section of the
local movie theatre. Long, seemingly relegated, to the dust bin of history, her
story, like Rosa Parks, has been told, and Viola now appears on the Canadian
ten dollar bill.
We are now almost 56 years past MLK’s famous speech, and while some
progress has been made, we all too clearly see the overt racism that is part of
our society; more clearly since Trump became President. Our cultural
institutions, schools, libraries, and museums should be forces that speak out
against racism in all of its forms. While I cannot speak for schools and
museums, I can, I hope, say that libraries should, and often do play a positive
role in combatting racism. While the American Library Association, in the past
did not speak out about segregated libraries, in the past 25 years has been
making a conscious attempt to combat racism and be more diverse and inclusive.
We certainly have work to still do, and I hope, that members of the Association
who are from underrepresented and marginalized groups will hold us all
responsible.
I am looking forward to heading to the American Library Association
Midwinter meeting in Seattle (January 25-28, 2019). For me, one of the
highlights of every Midwinter meeting is the Martin Luther King Sunrise
celebration on the Monday of the conference. This year’s speaker is Jeanne
Theoharis, a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College.
Her book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks won a 2014 NAACP Image Award
and the 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women
Historians. I love to see the wide diversity of the audience, each person, in
their own quiet or insistent way, making a difference in their libraries, and
in their communities. We always end the celebration by singing the “Black
National Anthem” – Lift Every Voice and Sing.
On this Martin Luther King Day when we are called to remember, I don’t want
to see Martin Luther King only through a rearview mirror; incomplete, distant,
in the past. Too much is at stake for the United States and the 327 million
citizens, and the myriad of visitors, immigrants, and asylum seekers. American
society will continue to become more diverse, and unless we want another civil
war, we must learn to understand, live, and love each other. A diverse United
States is not something to be feared, but something to challenge our
preconceived notions of the other. We must forge a United States where we all
are respected and have the same rights.
We may not see another Martin Luther King Jr. in our day, but we can each
make a difference in our families, our communities, and our country. We must
not see our democratic values, and the cherished words of the constitution “we
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to be ideas only seen through
the rear view mirror. They must be in front of us and empowering us to change
the world for the better.
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