Speeches

A Celebration of Unity

Welcome to this wonderful celebration of unity.

We come together this evening to not only honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his vision for racial harmony, but to celebrate and continue his great legacy of peace, justice and freedom. Today, January 15, marks what would have been Reverend King's 72nd birthday. Although he only lived to the age of 39, he had a tremendous impact upon the American consciousness and began a social revolution that continues today. For it was less than 40 years ago that the color of your skin in America determined where you could live, where you would shop, drink water, eat or sit on a bus. We have traveled a long road to freedom in those four decades, but there is still much to do -- as a nation, as a community and as individuals -- to realize Dr. King's dream that we be judged by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin.

I grew up in an all-white neighborhood of working class immigrants on the south side of Chicago. I was aware of something different about our household, namely that there were often blacks in our home, mostly talking to my father. I didn't make much of it at the time, although as a child it was clear to me that my father identified profoundly with the status of blacks in America. He had been forced out of school in Nazi Germany because of Hitler's racial policies, and was snuck out of the country at age 15, never to see again the 20 members of his family who died in the death camps.

The only country he could get into was South Africa, which in 1948, the year I was born, established Aparthied as official policy. My father, believing he was seeing racial policies again, decided our family had to flee South Africa, and we did so almost immediately. But only we left and the rest of my mother's family stayed behind.

Race was a topic in my family in a way it wasn't in the neighborhood, and only later would I learn more about why this was so. The week after Nelson Mandella's autobiography was published, and only then, I learned that my relatives who had remained in South Africa had been involved in hiding Mandella over the years, and in fact he spent the night before he was arrested and imprisoned at the home of my cousins Leon and Zelda Street.

As a footnote to that story, I might mention that I had personally refused to return to South Africa until Aparthied had been changed, and finally at the urging of Bayard Rustin and my long-time friend and colleague, Sam Proctor, I did return.

I mention all this because when the Civil Rights movement was as its height in the 1960s, it was natural for me to become involved, and it was in 1966 that I became familiar with the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States. And so here we are at Penn State - today - 35 years later.

As most of you know, Penn State and our local community have never been immune to racism and the bigotry that come when individuals are judged by outward appearances. Events of the past year continue to make this clear. These acts of hatred remind us that we must avoid complacency and confront those issues that were so much a part of the efforts of Martin Luther King.

As a community, we must not merely celebrate Reverend King's words and deeds -- we must live them and have the courage of persistence that he displayed throughout his short life. The courage to stand up for what is right. The courage to challenge the evils of hatred and racism. The courage to face bigotry and injustice. And every day must be a renewal of our commitment to the principles Reverend King so eloquently espoused. He is a man who taught our nation the importance of equality and the need to embrace diversity.

It is imperative that we honor the dignity and worth of every person to build a more peaceful, caring community. We must learn to accept our differences and unite against the forces of hate and ignorance.

Reverend King had a bold faith in the future of humankind and its ability to overcome the barriers that restrict freedom, harmony and happiness.

If he were here today, he would urge us as he did during his life to "uplift this nation that we love to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humaneness."

If we are to follow his dream, we too must celebrate and respect our common humanity. We must believe in our own power as individuals and as a community to unite and overcome barriers of indifference, fear, complacency, intolerance and hatred -- to create a truly inclusive and integrated society. Only by doing this, can we fulfill the promise of freedom and equality for all.