Al Anderson’s jukebox rasp cut through the Zoom proceedings during Morgantown’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances Monday afternoon.
Anderson, the Osage octogenarian, is known these days as a community activist and unofficial mayor of the aforementioned coal camp near the city where he was born and raised.
In the 1960s, he was living and working in Washington, D.C., where he sang rhythm and blues professionally, on top of managing a retail shoe store.
On Aug. 28, 1963, he closed early and gave everyone the afternoon off. That’s because everyone was going to see King at the national mall.
The kid from Osage was transfixed.
By the time King was done with his soaring (and largely ad-libbed) “I Have a Dream” speech, the only thing Anderson could do was stand there in awe.
It was like the very molecules were charged, he told The Dominion Post previously.
“Man,” he said, letting out his breath in a whoosh. “Man.”
Monday’s program was the 16th year for the University City event honoring King, who was brought down by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis in 1968.
The Community Coalition for Social Justice, an area watchdog group, annually hosts the event with Main Street Morgantown and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at WVU.
Financial backing is also offered by the City of Morgantown.
Community leaders and academics from all spectrums were on the bill.
Before COVID moved in, the event was held at the Metropolitan Theater downtown. With its kid-choirs and academic discourse, it carried the vibe of a high school talent show and higher roundtable, combined.
Monday’s event again featured Anderson, who sang and talked a little about its history. It was carried live on Facebook and Zoom – the stuff of science-fiction in 1963.
King’s Dream has bridged the 21st century also, other participants said. Sadly so, they added.
That’s because it’s still just that, said Anitra Hamilton, president of the Morgantown/Kingwood chapter of the NAACP.
At its core, she said, King’s dream is one of democracy for all people – “A dream yet unfilled,” she said.
On Monday, the federal holiday in his name, one of his sons made a trip of his own to Washington, in fact, to talk about work that still needs done.
Martin Luther King III was there to appeal to Congress.
The dream of King’s eldest son is that lawmakers will pass sweeping legislation that would knock back some of the Republican-led restrictions already voted into law in at least 19 states that make it more difficult to cast a ballot.
Voting for all is a right, every speaker on Monday’s program voiced. So is simply treating people with respect and dignity.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s final, fateful trip to Memphis was to lobby on behalf of city sanitation employees toiling in conditions that were unclean – even by the benchmarks of what they did for paychecks – which, they noted, didn’t provide a livable wage.
Two workers were also crushed to death by dilapidated, malfunctioning trucks in the days before King’s arrival in Tennessee.
He was effective as a leader not because he preached, the people on the Morgantown panel said. It was because he listened.
“Paying attention to people,” Hamilton said.
In days of voter suppression, police brutality and targeting because of pigment, paying attention couldn’t be more critical, the NAACP leader and others said.
Meanwhile, children from Cheat Lake and North Elementary schools balanced out the seriousness of the afternoon, with performances mixing singing and dance.
Anderson added a hand-clapping version of “This Little Light of Mine,” using a voice that once took him all the way to a Hollywood recording studio.
His version was tinged with the vibe of a Stax 45 rpm single: A platter that matters, on one of those long-ago jukeboxes, next to a lunch counter, where the first gossamer images of a Dream came to be.
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