Living the dream takes a special kind of dedication
January 22,2019
Read full Star Telegram article by the Star Telegram Editorial Board here.
Two big dedications happened Monday in Fort Worth. One was official. The other was personal.
Early in the morning, dozens of folks covering the breadth of humanity’s color spectrum dedicated a plaque at General Worth Square commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s lone, unforgotten speech here Oct. 22, 1959.
Then, at a noon rally in Sundance Square following the annual MLK Day parade — and simultaneously, during a day of service throughout Tarrant County — thousands more joined in dedicating themselves to living the dream.
It’s not easy dedicating a plaque, particularly a public history marker. You have to get a lot of people on board. In this case, that included city government leaders, the Chamber of Commerce, Visit Fort Worth, Texas A&M University School of Law and its legal clinic, benefactors and more.
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The morning dedication was a labor of love in itself, involving not only various speakers but a spirited Pledge of Allegiance and poem by Miss Endy’s Christian Academy and elegant rendition of “America the Beautiful” by the TCU Vocal Jazz Ensemble.
The noon rally in Sundance Square, populated by thousands of parade-goers and competing marching bands, was yet another big production, highlighted by a playing of King’s actual “I Have a Dream” speech — one of the greatest and most important oratories of a speech-laden 20th century.
Therein lies the personal dedication many made or renewed Monday: to continue making good on that debt of freedom that King called the “promissory note” of our founding documents. It’s hard to believe he had to make such an eloquent entreaty for basic human rights so long after the Emancipation Proclamation — and so recently as 1963. Or that the promissory note remains unpaid in full.
Still, the spirit was buoyant at the morning plaque dedication and noon rally, and was made flesh by some 800 volunteers observing a day of service at 47 sites throughout the county. Mayor Betsy Price called the day of service “a day of, not a day off.”
Elder Larry Lewis, former lieutenant to King friend Dr. Ralph Abernathy Sr., admitted being choked up by seeing the spirit of Martin Luther King in the faces at the plaque dedication. And, indeed, the ceremony felt like the “one Fort Worth” that plaque champion Pastor Kyev Tatum talked of.
Plaque dedications, as arduous as they are, seem a cinch compared with the day-in, day-out dedication of oneself to such a complicated cause as racial justice. It takes conscious effort, committed communities, and continual return to one’s priorities and principles.
And for the historically oppressed, it takes an unshakable faith in this country’s promise — the kind of conviction King counseled, and the type demonstrated recently by Shahid Shafi, who stuck by a Tarrant County GOP despite a bigoted faction’s attempt to oust him from a leadership post for no other reason than he’s a Muslim.
“My faith has been tested,” Shafi told the Sundance Square rally Monday. “But my faith has also been affirmed over and over again.”
That’s dedication.