(click ads to enlarge)

 

Celebrating The Life Of Dr. Martin Luther King

Editorial by: Tom Oosterhoudt

I only wish that everyone could have heard the Rev. Dr. Gwendolyn Magby address the crowd as the headline speaker for this year’s Martin Luther King Day Memorial Ceremony at the old “Cornish On the Corner” church, built by slaves almost a century and a half ago. Rev. Magby gave me chills as she invoked the spirit of Dr. King with the power and passion that seemed to be directly channeled from the late civil rights leader. Her theme was King’s “Audacity To Dream”, and it was a sermon-like speech that certainly touched the heart and spirit of everyone in that church Monday night. Clergy from at least a dozen area churches were on hand to show inter-faith solidarity. Thanks to Dr. Magby’s powerful words, both the dream and the quest for total equality for all people lives on.

Just about every church, community organization, and bank joined the worldwide effort to help our fellow Caribbean island of Haiti this past week. At St. Mary’s, Father John Baker spoke poignantly in his Sunday sermon, saying that the massive appeal and collective efforts to assist Haiti since the horrible earthquake flattened the country demonstrates the power of prayer. His words were extremely moving in that it highlights the relevance of religion at times like this.

Also in the spirit of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Rev. Ernie DeLoach hosted an orphan choir of youngsters from Uganda. The kids were all so precious that you wanted hug each and every one of them. These children had lost their parents to both the horror of war and an Africa ravaged by AIDS, yet they all seemed so happy. Apparently they have somehow grasped the fact that they are all God’s children and they sing because they are happy to be here. What a great way to celebrate Martin Luther King’s day! The group is called “Watoto”,and if you have the opportunity to catch them while they are here, don’t miss them. They are fabulous!

Celebrating Martin Luther King’s life always makes me reflect on my life experiences that brought me to embrace and extol the virtue of diversity today. Last year, I revealed for the first time how I was isolated in my college dorm back in the late ‘60s at FSU when I became openly gay. No one wanted to be my dorm mate. As fate had it, a fellow freshman was the first black student in the dorm and no one wanted to share a room with him either. We met and decided to share the bigotry that we mutually faced and became dorm mates. Granted...I wasn’t black and he wasn’t gay, but we each had experienced hate.

Believe it or not, even with our own room, we still became the continued target of hate. Crosses were actually burned in front of our dorm room, sometimes catching the door on fire. The door was sometimes pinned shut from the outside and acid was tossed under our door in the middle of the night emitting toxic fumes. The dorm door, even more often, had both “Faggot” and “nigger” scrawled across it. We both learned to face hate together. And until this day, when I look my black brothers and sisters in the eye, I can always feel the pain of prejudice, and what it has meant to their lives. I also felt their collective sigh of hope when President Obama was elected. It saddens me that Limbaugh and his ilk would rather see America fail than have Pres. Obama succeed.

But my journey in the face of hate did not stop there. A few years later while walking on a sidewalk in Atlanta one dark night, two hooded figures drove up to me in a headlightless pickup truck and hatefully screamed, “Die faggot”. Within seconds I saw what seemed like a flare explode out of a shotgun aimed at me, like fireworks in the night, and hearing the loud bang, I instinctively dove into the asphalt, barely missing the bullets that knocked out the huge store windows behind me at chest level. They were shooting to kill. I lay there hugging the asphalt, and it took a while to get me up. Once again, I had seen the faces of hate.

So if you ever wonder why diversity is my cause célèbre of sorts, it did not come easy. I live and breathe “one human family” every day of my life. And that’s why Conch Color thrives on the diversity that Key West has become famous for. I truly understand the “audacity to dream”, as my good buddy Rev. Magby put it. So I am proud to help perpetuate the dream of Dr. King. And in the words of another one of my favorite dreamers: You may say that I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will live as one.

May the dream live on..........

Tom Oosterhoudt
Editor & Publisher

PAST EDITORIALS

Education is the Answer to a Secure Economic Future

By: Tom Oosterhoudt - September 10, 2010