Kitsap County officials, local social justice leaders and preachers gathered at the President’s Hall of the county fairgrounds for the 30th annual celebration in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Jan. 15.
The federal holiday is celebrated as a day off from the everyday obligations by many, but for the hundreds of attendees at this year’s program, it was a celebration reminiscent of a high-energy Sunday morning church service. Songs led by the MLK Community Choir brought attendees to their feet, clapping their hands to the music’s tempo, and calls and responses of “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” rang out from the crowd.
Keynote speaker Allison Cannady-Smith, pastor at Bethel A.M.E. Church in Portland, OR, even joked that the event’s organizers must have known they were calling a Black pastor to highlight such a celebration. “If you’ve ever been to a Black church, you know that y’all are gonna have to talk back to me,” she cracked.
It was odd then, given the church-like setting, that the increasing lack of note to King’s status as a reverend carried just as loud as the other messages shared in the program. Calls for social justice and claims of “whitewashed” history were yelled loud and clear, but some leaders used their time to remind the crowd of the often-missing title and the faith-motivated mission for civil rights that King took on.
“We all need to remember that Dr. Martin Luther King was a pastor,” Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson said. “He was a man of love and grace and forgiveness, and I think that, in reality, is what made him so great and so powerful as he pursued justice for all people.”
“God got him to a place where he found his calling,” added senior pastor John Weston of the Silverdale Community Church, “and I don’t believe that he saw himself as a perfect man, but God gave him a perfect dream. It was powerful and prophetic.”
It was his faith and his willpower among other traits that motivated a style of peaceful protest where words and marches did the fighting that fists would typically occupy. It was a strategy of peaceful and loving unity that took his heaviest opponents aback and was even subject to criticism by some of his own supporters.
Yet, the mission remained, King even saying in the face of such adversity that, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
Rev. Dr. Frankie L. Coleman of the Sinclair Missionary Baptist Church in Bremerton used that message of love in his segment, calling on the crowd to share a caring message to those around them: “I love you, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it!”
It’s this love that he added should continue to be the focus of today’s continuance of King’s mission, extending it to those who are close to you as well as those who may be considered enemies.
“Love is what brings harmony to a society and a community,” Coleman said. King “always practiced non-violence, teaching many people that, staying together and following the teachings of Jesus Christ, we can get to that place.”
