Service and reflection: How Sonoma County is marking MLK Day

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister, a savvy political organizer and a gifted orator. He was a passionate advocate of nonviolence who frequently faced down police dogs and water cannons. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. The FBI began investigating him for possible ties to the Communist Party in 1963.

Nearly 55 years after his assassination, different people continue to draw different meanings from King’s life and legacy.

And they will mark his birth in unique and personal ways. For many, Martin Luther King Jr. Day will include an element of community service — a unique tradition among America’s national holidays. Others will opt for personal reflection or joyful celebration. Here is how a sampling of Sonoma County residents will be honoring Dr. King on Monday.

Looking for allies

Tina Rogers attended Santa Rosa’s first Martin Luther King Festival in the early 1970s. She was a baby, held aloft in her father’s arms.

Rogers’ family is deeply ingrained in Sonoma County’s small but vibrant Black community, through Community Baptist Church, and King has always been central to their gatherings. There was the festival, which at some point morphed into a Juneteenth celebration at MLK Park, and birthday festivities at Santa Rosa High School or the Luther Burbank Center.

The latter event has gone online, and Rogers, who graduated from Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park and now works primarily as a multifocal arts educator (she is also a program coordinator with RAICES Collective), will be co-hosting the 2023 version with Ken Duncan. It’s Sunday evening from 6:30-8 p.m., accessible via a Zoom link or a Facebook livestream. Rogers expects several hundred people to take part online or in person.

It’s an uplifting event that includes music and poetry, but speaking by phone, Rogers wasn’t merely tossing bouquets. She believes Black Americans are no closer to achieving equality than when King was leading marches in Selma or Birmingham, and are getting passed by as other minority groups are offered benefits and protections.

“The reason why we have civil rights is Black people,” Rogers said. “We were the ones getting hosed and chewed up by dogs. We’re asking all communities to join us and be allies.”

After co-hosting last year’s King Birthday Celebration, Rogers came away buoyant, she said.

“I feel like we did Dr. King and his family proud,” Rogers said. “We want to have fun. We want to share the love. But we also want to use our voices to make sure Sonoma County aligns with us, and it’s not like, ‘I want to take the day off for my kid to go skiing.’”

‘Be-of-service’ learning

Part of the educational component of that Sunday-night Birthday Committee celebration will be delivered by Kirstyne Lange, head of the Santa Rosa-Sonoma County chapter of the NAACP.

Lange was still working on her notes Thursday, but said she was likely to focus on Martin Luther King’s collaboration with the national NAACP during the growth of the Civil Rights movement. Lange can bring some personal ties into the discussion, too. King helped guide her educational path.

Not many people realize, Lange said, that MLK spoke at Mills College in Oakland in 1958.

“It’s not historically, in my opinion, bragged about,” she said. “But there’s a beautiful photo I was able to snag from the school library where he’s addressing the audience. My uncle was very much a proponent of civil rights, and he said, ‘If Martin Luther King went there, you should go there.’”

Lange was hoping to take part in the volunteer cleanup at MLK Park, also known as Andy’s Unity Park, in southeast Santa Rosa on Monday. But Santa Rosa Parks & Recreation has postponed the event because of relentless winter storms.

Lange’s backup plan is what she calls “be-of-service learning.” She’ll be reading works by Black authors, including “Psalms for Black Lives: Reflections for the Work of Liberation” by Gabby Cudjoe-Wilkes and Andrew Wilkes — a book she has consciously saved for Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Meanwhile, Lange’s Sunday-night talk will include NAACP Sonoma County’s goals for 2023.

Those goals include more affordable and accessible housing, especially for the Black community here; measures to increase enrollment of Black students and the hiring of Black teachers; and working with law enforcement agencies “to address bias in community experiences.”

Like King, Lange insists that contemplation make room for activism.

A plea for peace

If most people associate MLK with Black Americans’ struggle for equal rights, Susan Collier Lamont will be focusing on a different thread of his preaching. And she’ll get a head start.

“We’ll be centering on his message that the U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” Lamont said Thursday, two days before the group she helps steward, the Peace & Justice Center of Sonoma County, was planning to continue its weekly Saturday anti-war vigils in Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa, weather permitting.

At 74, Lamont has vivid memories of watching King’s speeches on television, and she recalls exactly where she was when he was assassinated in Memphis by a white supremacist — working on a college project at the kitchen table of her home in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Lamont came to embrace King more and more, she said, as he expanded the targets of his criticism to capitalism and war. The Peace & Justice Center counts more than 60 overt and covert U.S.-backed wars since World War II.

“We’re basically against all of it,” Lamont said. “And we’re convinced Martin Luther King would be against all of it.”

Standing in King’s footprints

Tina Rivera was living in Louisiana and working on women’s health issues in 2003 when she traveled to Washington, D.C., for a conference. Rivera, now director of the Sonoma County Department of Health Services, wound up on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during a break.

“Do you know where you’re standing?” asked a passing tour guide.

Rivera was confused, until she looked down and realized her feet were on the very spot where Martin Luther King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

“I was overcome with emotions,” Rivera said. “There were tears running down my face.”

The moment had more than fleeting impact. Standing in the proverbial shoes of the inspirational human rights leader made Rivera reexamine her intent.

“I thought, wow, what do I want my life to say? What contribution can I make?” Rivera said. “I wanted to live my life with purpose. Have I done enough? Have I said enough? Have I represented my culture and race enough in hostile spaces. Or do I allow silence to take the place of speaking up? It was a pivotal moment in my own personal life.”

Normally, Rivera said, she would be out in the community on MLK Day. The deluge will make that hard, in part because she wants to be available to support the county emergency operations center. So she is opting for a Zoom visit with a couple of old friends. Both, like Rivera, are women of color.

“They’re sisters in the walk,” she said. “We’ve been through some things in our professional careers. We have kept in touch, and it helps us not feel alone. We like to encourage each other: ‘Hey, we’re alive to fight another day. It’s OK. We can keep doing this.’”

A universal hero

Michael Ezra isn’t planning anything special for MLK Day. But few Sonoma County residents have spent more time considering King’s contributions to our national culture and political landscape.

Ezra is chair of the American Multicultural Studies department at Sonoma State University. His printed work includes the books “Civil Rights Movement: People and Perspectives” and “The Economic Civil Rights Movement: African Americans and the Struggle for Economic Power.”

Martin Luther King’s evolution in the popular imagination fascinates Ezra. Around the time of his assassination, a Gallup Poll showed that a large majority of white Americans gave King a negative approval rating. Now?

“There’s no market for criticizing King,” Ezra said. “Even CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference), they sell King memorabilia there. All my students are pretty much taught that he’s the most important leader, and arguably the most moral, of the Civil Rights era.”

Those students are often surprised, however, to learn that King was a radical socialist at the end of his life, Ezra said. If he were still moving listeners from the pulpit, or from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, he would still be a polarizing figure, the professor said.

Ezra appreciates all those sides of Martin Luther King, and believes it’s a disservice to his legacy to smooth over the rough edges. But he also sees the virtue in a public figure everyone can embrace, no matter how divided America might be at any given time.

“I think there’s definitely value in having King as a universal hero, no matter what he’s reduced to,” Ezra said. “It’s a baseline for telling a more expansive story. And at the very least, it challenges white superiority. It allows people to have an African-American hero.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.