By Jada Ingleton
In the days leading up to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK)’s birthday, Cliff Beckford, pastor of Living Word Church in Southwest D.C., was among those reflecting on the legacy born January 15, 1929.
During a Jan. 12 kickoff for MLK Holiday DC celebrations – the District’s historic tradition in honor of the late civil rights champion – Beckford framed the day of celebration as both a remembrance and a charge for those carrying King’s mantle forward.
“Today we gather not merely to commemorate a birthday, but to confront a burden,” Beckford said at the Jan. 12 prayer service at Living Word Church. “Dr. Martin Luther King [Jr.] does not belong to history alone – he belongs to responsibility. They are often reduced to a moment of reflection without movement, admiration without imitation, memory without mandate.”
While the church service launched the weeklong series leading to King’s official federal holiday (Monday, Jan. 19), much of the past week’s celebratory momentum was marked by what would have been the freedom fighter’s 97th birthday.
Beyond honoring a generational moral compass, faith activists and community leaders across the nation are singing King’s legacy to the tune of a roadmap for political and social liberation.
“Times like these make me think of Dr. King’s beloved community. From Southeast, D.C. to the Sudan and Valley Green to Venezuela, we are all connected for the same cause of justice and liberation,” the Rev. Tony Lee, pastor of Community Of Hope AME Church in Temple Hills, Maryland, told The Informer.
What TV host and journalist Joy Reid once coined “the age of Don Crow” – a poignant reference to President Donald Trump and his administrative acts within less than a year in office – translates to a nearly 50-year parallel – arguably, a continuum – of threats to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Many of these GOP-backed policies even hold roots in the Civil Rights era, such as: attempts to rewrite historical narratives of African Americans; elimination of corporate and academic DEI standards, including the overturning of affirmative action in 2023; negligence among worker rights and protections; and, among the most recent, threats to Black voter representation, as a result of Republican redistricting efforts.
For Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, upholding King’s legacy means emulating the dream that started with him.
“This is the unfinished work of Dr. King,” Campbell told The Informer, particularly touting the importance of voting. “Continuing Dr. King’s legacy in today’s climate means protecting the very foundation of our democracy…and we will not stop until it is done.”
Remembering a Leader of ‘Great Humility’
While King is highly regarded for his moments in the movement, the Rev. Gerald Durley, an international civil rights activist, reflects on a legacy far greater than his biggest headlines.
“I remember him as a man of great humility,” Durley, pastor emeritus of the Providence Baptist Church of Atlanta, Georgia, told The Informer. “See the humanity in the man. Dr King was a husband. [He] was a father…a Baptist preacher. And with all of those human characteristics, he used those to be a civil rights leader.”
A graduate alumnus of Howard University, Durley implores others to see the selflessness in King’s myriad of accomplishments:
- A fearless advocate of all races and religions, who led a diverse crowd of thousands – alongside the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis and Durley himself – in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
- The former president of the 382-day Montgomery Bus Boycott that led to the desegregation of public transportation. Durley noted that King, who at the time was a father to two young children, worked to uplift the formidable sheroes of resistance that laid the groundwork — the Women’s Political Committee (WPC) of Montgomery, Rosa Parks, and a then 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, who died at the age of 86 on Jan. 13.
- A 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who then donated all of his proceeds to the Civil Rights Movement.
To top it all off, Durley highlighted that lifelong courage in the final moments of King’s life, which was spent championing rights for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, just a day before he was fatally shot on a hotel balcony on April 4, 1968.
“He never saw his four children do the things that many of us see now, but he gave up that for something that he believed in,” Durley told The Informer. “He was a man who didn’t care who got the credit; he was willing to sacrifice. Can you imagine if we had people [who] have been framed to do that – what it would be?”
That’s why, in honor of King’s birthday, and especially given the current presidential administration, the civil rights pioneer is imploring all descendants of the Black American dream to look inwards and seek, what he calls, a “moral obligation” to uplift others of the diaspora.
“We as a people must go back into ourselves again – as we did when they were…building their America, and used us as a people [paving] the roads,” he explained. “Dr. King would still be saying: ‘What are you willing to sacrifice, what are you willing to give? [What lines are you] willing to cross?’”
As for the remaining slate of MLK Holiday DC, Washingtonians can look forward to basking in a holistic commemoration of King’s indelible legacy, including this Saturday’s Eighth Annual Prayer Breakfast at Covenant Baptist UCC Church in Southwest D.C.
Jan. 19 features: the respective Seventh Annual Health and Wellness Fair and Community Clean-Up Project, all culminating in the 21st Annual MLK Peace Walk Rally and Parade marking its return to the streets of Southeast D.C.
“I pray that tonight will be a night of change, a night where we begin something new again…and when we sit down, and we plan, we will plan with a purpose,” Beckford told the room of Living Word Church on Jan. 12. “Dr. King looked through time, and he saw even a day like today. We do him a disservice if we do not champion the cause of his life up to this point.”
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