About 50 Black Arkansans — local politicians, educators, community and faith leaders — gathered Monday evening at Allison United Presbyterian Church in Little Rock for an event quickly “birthed over the weekend” to show the “urgency of the moment that we live in.”
The gathering, organized by the W. Harold Flowers Law Society, Arkansas NAACP and ACLU Arkansas, was intended to mark the 60th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, given at the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.
Earlier in the day, the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission hosted an event on the steps of the state Capitol commemorating the March, including a reenactment of King’s speech and tributes from students.
With a theme of “History, Education and Divine Order,” Monday’s event began on a somber note rooted in current events. Pastor Brian K. Baker of St. Mark Community Church in Jacksonville, Fla., provided a prayer that acknowledged the racially motivated shooting in Jacksonville over the weekend that claimed the lives of three Black people.
The main portion of Monday’s event consisted of a series of speeches — including those given by Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. and Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington — addressing the concerns of the Black community. They specifically focused on how Black history is being treated by lawmakers across the country, where the status of an Advanced Placement course on African American studies has dominated headlines.
Washington, one of the first speakers, began by noting that in 2023, “Black Americans have more rights and freedoms than we’ve ever had before,” including “opportunities … that only existed in the minds of those in 1963 and Dr. Martin Luther King” when they marched on Washington to “shape the nation’s moral conscience.”
Gallery: AR MLK Commission Commemoration
“We stand on the progress of that work. The sacrifices and activism have not been in vain,” she said.
However, Washington noted that “at the same time, we also honor them by acknowledging that a just and free America is still an incomplete project. Having new freedoms doesn’t mean the others aren’t long overdue. Now is a time of increased vigilance. Now is a time of increased action, because policymakers — and they’re working very hard and you know as well as I, they are working very aggressively across this nation — to erase crucial improvements that have been made.”
After Washington spoke, her speech was given context by Evelyn Moorehead, the chaplain of the Little Rock NAACP.
Moorehead, a great-granddaughter of a slave who had been brought to Pine Bluff, said it was “liberating” to know that in 2016, that same city elected its first Black woman as mayor.
“History is under attack,” Moorehead said. “If it weren’t important for us to know where we came from, there wouldn’t be such an effort to remove it and erase it and stop it from being taught.”
Moorehead then introduced Scott, the first popularly elected Black mayor in Little Rock’s history.
Scott paraphrased a famous quote by philosopher George Santayana, saying “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to the past.”
“Some 60 years since the March on Washington, there are so many who don’t recall, don’t even know, our nation’s history,” he said. “We are living in a time where [there are those who] are trying to create a revisionist history, to revise our history, to not share our history. So our youths may not know. … Oh, so much has changed. But oh, so much has not changed. Which gives us the reason that we must continue to tell the story. As we tell the story, understand that we have to transform right now, to understand that we come from a stock that’s blood, sweat and tears have allowed us all to enjoy the activities of life that we have right now.”
Another speaker, Amari Brantley, 20, of Waterbury, Conn., the president of the NAACP chapter at Philander Smith University in Little Rock, paid homage to King’s 1963 speech by invoking the line that “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.”
“Do you understand that bad check is still being cashed today?” asked Brantley, who then referenced a conversation he had earlier in the day with another guest speaker, Jesse Hargrove.
“He said ‘our oppressors are scared to let us talk about their oppression and they’ve threatened with oppressing us again,’” Brantley quoted. “When we talk about education, we have to understand that the students of today are the leaders of tomorrow and what do we gain by depriving them of their education? … How can we expect our Black and brown people to advance when we’re being deprived of our education?”
Brantley ended his time with a call-and-response with the gathered audience.
Three times it rang out through the church.
“Enough is enough! … Enough is enough! … Enough is enough!”