Leonard Pitts Jr.

From Staff Reports

Activities around Western North Carolina honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in January included an address by nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., a talk by an inmate released from death row and a march to commemorate King’s legacy.

Also, giving the keynote speech at at UNCA’s MLK celebration on Jan. 20 was Dr. Robert Bullard, the Edmund Asa Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta. (A story on Bullard’s presentation and a Q&A afterward appears on Page 14.)

Pitts, a Pulitzer-winning columnist, addressed the 29th annual Martin Luther King Prayer Breakfast, which drew an audience of more than 1,000 people on Jan. 16 in the Grand Ballroom at the Grove Park Inn in North Asheville.

Pitts sad that, despite the perception among younger people that King was an “airy-fairy dream, some soft and squishy, turn-of-the-century prophet,” in reality “there was an impatience” in him. “The thing that people seldom seem to understand about Martin Lutherer King is that there was in hm an unwillingness to wait, a frustration with the status quo, a refusal to believe a thing must always be simply because it has always been.”

To understand King, Pitts said, it is requisite that one understand the history of oppression in Africa. He then cited what he termed parallels in the initial freedom of blacks after the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws that eventually ruled the South, calling for separate but equal facilities. Pitts said they were seldom equal.

The plight of blacks in the U.S. filled King with what Pitts called “angry love.”

“Martin Luther King had a crazy idea that the walls between black and white, high and rugged, centuries old and maintained by the forces of law and custom, could be made to crumble. And that we wouldn’t have to wait for some utopian future to see it happen.”

Other dignitaries at the breakfast included Asheville Mayor Terry Bellamy, who recollected that last year at this time she was in Washington, D.C., attending the inauguration of Barrack Obama, whom she termed the first African-American president.
“Today, we are here to honor a bridge-builder,” she said. “I’m asking you to be a bridge-builder.”

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, who noted that he also attended Obama’s inauguration. said, “We owe so much to Dr. King and so many others.”

Actress Andie MacDowell urged the audience to educate itself about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where, she said, many thousands of women and girls have been systematically kidnapped, raped and tortured. She said informed citizens can stop what’s going on in the Congo.

The Martin Luther King Fulfilling the Dream Humanitarian Award was given to Julia Nooe, a professor at Mars Hill College. She is chair of MHC’s department of social work and previously has served on the prayer breakfast board.

On Jan. 18, MLK Day, Glen Edward Chapman, a former death row inmate, addressed the MLK Jr. Unity Breakfast “Finding Unity in Diversity” program in Bo Thomas Auditorium at Blue Ridge Community College in East Flat Rock.

Chapman, who spent 14 years on death row after being wrongly convicted of killing two people, was freed through the efforts of UNC Asheville psychology professor Pam Laughon.

Chapman said at the breakfast that he learned to stop complaining about his predicament and decided to fight for his freedom.
He described his conviction to “an out-of-body experience ... For three years on death row, I cried like a baby.”

However, he began writing letters, trying to find people who could prove his innocence, eventually reaching Laughon. She found his case different and eventually a judge hear an appeal, overturned the conviction, and the district attorney decided not to retry the case.

Gary River of BRCC said Laughon’s actions are reminscent of King’s because she worked hard to help someone.

Also on Jan. 18, the annual MLK Day peace march, including around 600 people of all ages, races and religions,  proceeded down MLK Boulevard to MLK Jr. Park. Some sang “We Shall Overcome” as they marched.

The march drew the largest turnout in its history, according to Oralene Simmons, chairwoman of the Martin Ltuerh King Jr. Association of Asheville-Buncombe County.