PROCESSING...

Sometimes honesty is the best policy. I've actually needed time to process what we saw and heard at the Martin Luther King Day celebration at Viterbo University in La Crosse Monday evening. The awkward program lacked a cohesive thread to explain its parts to its mostly white Midwestern audience. 

A variety of music genres by Viterbo's Concert Choir included 2  hip hop songs with I.M.P.A.C.T.'s hip hop and R&B artist Mario Street asking for audience participation. Wrong crowd. The choir for the most part looked really uncomfortable, not really feeling this genre of music. It would have been great to have the lyrics projected for us all to read as from the audience faces we were clueless as to the music's message.

Florence B. Price

 Pianist Aaron Matthew treated us to a moving symphonic piece by the first African American woman composer, Florence Price and there was also a Negro spiritual I Don't Feel No Ways-Tired sung in operatic interpretation(?) by Viterbo's Diana Cataldi. 
(I don't know about you but I say leave a spiritual in its original form.)

Yes, we all were there to give homage to Martin Luther King, Jr.  and his inspiration for the Civil Rights movement and the many others who wanted equality including the NAACP, Freedom Riders, Malcolm X and Black Panthers. We are all beneficiaries of the identity politics movements in forming all the other movements for women, gender equality, immigrants, all of which have their roots in the Civil Rights Movement and its demand for civic equality through voting, education, employment, housing... all of whose progress is today once again being threatened.

The night's program was a menagerie of words with greetings by Viterbo University's president, Richard Artman, an invocation  by Pastor Smith, Jr. from Bountiful Harvest of Faith Church, UW-L's Senior Multicultural Advisor Mistress of Ceremonies Bethany Brent and the MLK Leadership Award winner Tony Yang.

Sheyann Webb-Christburg

The highlight of the evening was our guest speaker Sheyann Webb-Christburg known as the 'youngest' Freedom Fighter in1965's Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama who shared her past and hopes with us. She repeated the story she has told 100's of times of how the great leader Martin Luther King changed her life.

Bloody Sunday's youngest activist  Sheyann

Ms Webb-Christburg first  met Dr. King as a seven year old with her friend Rachel as they were playing outside the Brown Chapel A.M.E church where King's entourage had parked for an organizational meeting.  As he noticed the young girls, he approached them, introduced himself and engaged them in conversation asking first typical adult questions about their names, ages and where they lived. They pointed towards the projects. King then asked them the well known Civil Rights questions "What do you want? " He coaxed them to respond: "Freedom." Then he added, "When do you want it?" The girls responded "Now." He had 2 new followers as King invited the 2 into the church for the meeting, even going out of his way to get them chairs before getting his own. They learned a lot about inequality first hand listening to King's words. When her parents discovered where she had been, they voiced their concern for her safety and forbade her from participating in any more right to vote meetings for the black community. Sheyann disobeyed her parents's wishes and would sneak out whenever Dr. King was back in town to hear him speak. She knew at an early age she didn't want to be a second class citizen. 

Before the Bloody Sunday March, she even wrote her own obit in case she didn't survive.  She vowed and has continued to share the memories of that day ... marchers on their knees praying on the bridge before becoming victims of the police atrocities of releasing dogs on the protesters/ the use of tear gas and fire hoses, police horse riders wielding clubs, angry whites yelling racial slurs and the blood shed will always be an indelible memory.  

Ms Webb-Christburg considers her speaking engagements and the movie she co-wrote with her childhood friend Rachel  "Selma, Lord, Selma" as part of her repayment to MLK for raising her consciousness and motivating her to be the best that she could be, to make a difference through activism.

Yes, "the road is not easy and we have come so far." As we are all feeling now there is still a lot of road in front of us...  

I DON'T FEEL NO WAYS TIRED ( the way it should be sung)