TOPEKA — Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day came early in Kansas, beginning on his birthday with a march, a formal proclamation and words honoring the beloved civil rights figure.
The Jan. 16 event, put on annually by the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, was an occasion to highlight King’s accomplishments as a young man and his vision for economic justice. A wintery march around the Statehouse was followed by song, prayer and speeches in King’s honor.
The event’s keynote speaker, Donna Rae Pearson, finished her remarks with a challenge to carry on King’s legacy not just as a memory “but as a living mission to boldly move forward from commemoration to action, knowing that Dr. King’s dream will continue to guide and inspire us.”
Gov. Laura Kelly, in her speech, drew a connection between Pearson’s words and her own the night before at the State of the State address.
“That we have to think about the future. That we have to think about those who come after us, and we have to fight for them now,” she said Friday.
King was 26 years old when he was recruited to lead the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. He was 39 years old when he was assassinated in 1968.
In a podcast interview with Kansas Reflector, Mark McCormick, an author and journalist who has written columns for Kansas Reflector, pointed to concentrated wealth, class inequality and dispassion as real challenges facing American society.
“We’re in the middle of a crisis of empathy,” McCormick said. “We just don’t have empathy for other people. In fact, what we like to do is we like to blame people for the position that they’re in, while at the same time ignoring the systems that organize our society, and this was a society organized by race and privilege.”
