 Welcome to all of you wonderful people who have come out tonight to remember a great man, Martin Luther King, Jr. This part of the service will be very brief. We want to begin with just a moment of silence because anything and everything that we sing and say up here will hardly do justice to the memory of Martin King. Let us be in silence and then Juliet Young will sing for us. It's absolutely important for this event to be held in any public building in the city of Berlin or any place else. I am especially delighted that it's held here in City Hall. Because it's absolutely imperative, especially in these times, that City Halls hold up the United States of America of whole moral values and it's important that we honor Dr. King in this City Hall this time. Today, many of us in Burlington and people throughout the world are outraged and shot by the neo-nazi type activity which is taking place in South Africa. We find it incomprehensible that at the end of the 20th century, human beings who constitute the vast majority of that country's population can be treated in such a blatantly racist, violent and undemocratic manner. It is a tragedy for the people of South Africa. But how quickly we forget that not so many years ago, in the United States of America, black people in our own country, in the land of the free and in the home of the brave were not able to vote and had no voting rights. We denied the right to go to decent schools, went to segregated schools. We denied the right to decent job opportunities, were condemned to be your labor, were lynched, were kept illiterate. And in 1941, when the United States government went to war for freedom and democracy against the horrors of Nazism, we went to war in segregated military power. Black and white soldiers were unable to even fight side by side in the home of the free and the land of the brave. There came a time in American history after the war when the hypocrisy of reclaiming to the world that we were a land of the free could no longer be defended when black people were unable to sit with white people at lunch and ends or go to the same bathrooms or ride in the front of the bus. And there came at that same time a man, a very brave man, a very courageous man, Martin Luther King, Jr., who stood up along with many other people in the civil rights movement and led the struggle for black dignity and led the struggle and raised the voice for white America for a system of values that we could be proud of. He pointed away, the fear that I have today, 18 years after Martin Luther King's tragic death, is not just that it was a tragedy that he was struck down in the midst of an act of life, but I fear an even greater tragedy. It is always a tragedy when somebody dies young, but there's something worse that could happen, and in a sense I fear it is happening, that somebody dies is bad, but that when a great person dies who had a vision, and when that vision dies, that is even worse. There's anything important about tonight and about the celebrations that are taking place all over America, it's not just the honor of a great man and a brave man, everybody can do that, but it's the pledge of solid oath that the dream and the vision that Martin Luther King had not died. Mary Benson, a Burlington area school teacher who is also a member of the group Kwanzaa, which works in the schools to teach about racism. Nari was featured in a story in the free press yesterday and will I believe be talking about her experiences as a child in the Selma area and on the Selma march. I was born in Belglade, Florida. My parents taught and lived on a migrant camp. When I was three years old, we moved to Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. My father was a Presbyterian minister, my mother was and still is a librarian at the university there. Within the small black college community, I led a relatively sheltered and peaceful life. I did not really know any white people personally. My school, teachers, principal, neighborhood, church, supermarket, brownie and Girl Scout troops were all black. Downtown Tuskegee was another story. It was all white. My parents used the bank, then the only bank, but every other white owned business was boycotted. There was a white neighborhood that we drove through only at Christmas time to look at the Christmas decorations. I was 11 years old before I knew that Tuskegee had white schools and only then because three high school students, black high school students tried and succeeded to integrate them. When that happened, the Ku Klux Klan rode through our neighborhood because two of the students lived there. I remember lying on the couch in the living room shivering because I thought they'd come to my house. Black ministers' homes were high on the Klan's hit list. I believe, however, the deacons, a black defense against the Klan group made up of church elders may have helped them to just keep on riding. We shopped in Montgomery, the closest city, a Jim Crow city, the state capitol. My parents would never let us patronize any places that had segregated windows to do business through or segregated bathrooms unless it was absolutely necessary and only then with complete disgust and disdain. My brother and I never got to go to the circus or the fairs or Miss Patty's Playhouse, which were advertised so attractingly on television because only white children were allowed. At that time, I felt so cheated. I grew up with George Wallace as governor. He is still governor and, for me, still an embarrassment. Governor Wallace was a member of the Klan and a solid supporter and perpetrator of the Klan's beliefs. Blacks were harassed and killed all the time. It was more than once that white men and cars shouted angry words through rocks or tried to run us off the road. We weren't supposed to have working vehicles or decent clothing. We were too uppity and needed to be shown our place. Through it all, my parents never badmouth whites too much. They explain that all white people aren't bad. Mostly white people are ignorant. They don't know any better or they're just sick and you must hope and pray that they get well. But sometimes they are just stupid and evil right through the core and they can never be trusted. Now Martin Luther King had a big part in my upbringing. His name was household. His picture hung and still does above my father's desk. We watched everything we could about him. My father and sister went to church to hear him. He led people to stand up for themselves. We were always worried for him. My parents talked about him to us all the time. They worked very hard to instill a sense of pride in us. A strength of spirit that was as ancient as Africa, as honorable as Native America, and as deeply rooted as all my grandmothers. A pride that could never be broken. Watching Dr. King on TV, reading about yet another of his arrest, walking through the streets of Selma in Montgomery with him, hearing his voice boom over land where no black voices were heard, helped to instill this pride. He was not alone. He was and is a reminder of what we as a people have been, what we are, what we could and can be. In times like now, we are attacked, abused, or assaulted. When one out of every two black children born here will live in poverty without adequate clothing, shelter, food, education, and health care. When many of today's college students have never heard about civil rights, were never taught about racism, don't know what anti-Semitism means and think feminism is old hat. When white supremacist organizations are on the rise, when affirmative action is being dismantled, when black unemployment is higher than ever, when Native Americans are still being ripped off and squeezed so our government can get at that oil, mineral, and uranium deposits under the land. And it was so graciously granted to them because it was thought to be a wasteland. When women and children still represent the largest and most oppressed group worldwide. When blacks in South Africa are waging a long and now violent struggle to get back their land from people who never had any right or claim to it in the first place, we must reevaluate our priorities. In times like these, we must choose the path of justice, of freedom and human rights, of hope and faith, and most of all of peace and self-determination. I wonder why it took so long for this nation to set aside a time to celebrate these values and goals to strive for. Although I am glad the city has chosen to honor Martin's dream tonight, I wonder why the city has not made Martin Luther King Day a holiday. As I've heard, we simply cannot afford it. I ask, how can we not afford it? I ask this of the state also. We need to reevaluate our priorities. We as a city, as a people, need to make our holidays real and worthwhile. What could be better to celebrate and have time to meditate upon than the end of oppression for all oppressed peoples? We can afford to celebrate a president who was a slave owner, a sailor who was discovered stealing onto this land by a group of Native Americans thinking he'd found India, a traditional feast that came before the death sentence was carried out against an entire culture and peoples, and yet we cannot afford to celebrate a holiday for peace and justice. Again, I say we need to reevaluate our priorities, personally, as a community, as a nation. Otherwise, we choose to continue on the path of self-destruction and total annihilation. Thank you. As long as we don't accept differences, as long as we don't respect differences, as long as there's one person in the world being oppressed, none of us are really free. I wish that life was free, and people were not longing for their fundamental needs. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and men lost their control of society. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and nobody had to be hungry. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and women were not taught to live dependently. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and everyone could receive what they needed medically. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and children were not abused sexually. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and we had not lost our ability to function psychically. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and people of color were not treated so shabbily. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and being old was something we all strive to be. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and lesbians gays did not have to live so secretly. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and we questioned what we learned about other countries. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and in love we were not so vulnerable emotionally. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and we related to each other spiritually. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and we respected all abilities. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and there was not any importance to having money. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and the earth was valued as a living entity. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and I could forget all the ugliness I have seen. I wish that life was free. I wish that life was free, and I was free to be me. Thank you.