Hundreds of people gathered Monday for the 40th annual Martin Luther King Jr. tribute to hear speeches from community leaders and activists, see music and dance performers and shop at local vendors.
But most noticeable were the constant shouts of “Hello Sir!” and “How you doing?!,” the handshakes and hugs from old friends and mentors, the children running through the hall – signs of a community coming together, especially during a politically challenging time.
“Keep Alive the Dream,” put on since the 1970s by the World Arts Foundation, seeks to celebrate and preserve African-American contributions in American culture. It has been recognized as the largest long-standing community cultural event of its kind in Oregon.
This year, organizers held it at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Northeast Portland in recognition of their many community volunteers, said Donny Adair, an activist and radio personality who helped organize the event.
“MLK is still an icon for us in the struggle for equality. By celebrating this day, we’re acknowledging the barriers and discrimination that still exist in America today and throughout the whole world,” Adair told The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Adair, who came to the event with his grandson, said challenges such as lack of affordable housing, poverty and food insecurity were critical to overcome for Black and other communities of color.
“There are forces at work that want to spin the clock back. … We haven’t gotten to ‘free at last, free at last’ still,” he added, quoting the ending of King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
It wasn’t lost on attendees that this year’s event was held “at a swank hotel in Albina,” Adair said. The neighborhood was once part of the historical Albina district, a thriving community where many Black families had bought homes, built churches and ran businesses.
Those homes were razed in the 1950s and 1960s to make way for public works projects and other new buildings. Other Black families moved away as the neighborhood disintegrated, including the mother of Narvy James Jr., a musician and business owner who has come to the event for years.
“In the past, people lived across the street from each other, everybody watched each other’s kids, we closed the streets to have BBQ’s … now, there’s no sense of community, except for the churches,” James Jr. said.
That’s why “Keep Alive the Dream” has been so important for the community, he said, offering a space for people to gather, long-time friends to reconnect and to teach the next generation about the importance of King’s fight for equal rights.
“We grew up here in the Albina community, and because of the struggles we went through, it’s necessary to keep the legacy going,” James Jr. said. “‘We have to encourage young people to get involved.”
Former state Sen. Margaret Carter, the first Black woman elected to the Oregon Legislature, took the stage at the event to a standing ovation and exhorted people to keep fighting.
“Most of us are sitting back saying, ‘Oh, they’re going to do it, let somebody else do it,’” she chided the crowd. “Stop being lazy!”
People responded with “Tell it like it is, Margaret!”
Carter, speaking only hours after President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term in office, decried Trump’s intentions to remove diversity and inclusion mandates, dismantle policies supporting LGBTQ communities and destroy health care.
“Get your muscles ready, get your legs going, because we’re going to be very darn busy in terms of fighting for the American way, that we too are Americans,” she said.
Carter said every American should get involved in working for equality.
“The fight isn’t just about Black people. You can’t have justice, you can’t have freedom until all of us are free,” she said “Too many of our people have lost their lives and we must not allow their fighting to have been in vain.”
Carter then led the crowd in a chant of “We are not hopeless.”
Other speakers included Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, activist S. Renee Mitchell and Portland City Councilor Loretta Smith. The event also included performances by the Papalotl Mexican Ballet and Joe Bean Keller.
State Sen. Lew Frederick, D-North and Northeast Portland, who met King in Atlanta during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, said King told him to not let hate and bitterness into his heart, but instead to use those emotions to focus on peaceful, constructive work.
“Decades ago, Dr. King would tell us, before we headed off to the marches, that if we wanted to do well, we should not let hate, anger or fear develop, because even small amounts of it will create further problems,” Frederick told the crowd. “We’ve earned the right to be angry, but only if we channel and translate it to keep up the good fight and the good trouble.”
— Gosia Wozniacka covers environmental justice, climate change, the clean energy transition and other environmental issues. Reach her at gwozniacka@oregonian.com or 971-421-3154.
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