News

KING’S ‘DREAM’ INSPIRED GREAT CHANGE BUT STILL MORE PROGRESS TO BE MADE

By Ezra Mann/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, August 29, 2008 12:07 AM CDT

Though the “I Have a Dream” speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Aug. 28, 1963, was a defining moment in the American civil rights movement, those asked in Pine Bluff on Thursday, 45 years after the speech, believe that the nation still has a long way to go before his dreams are realized.

Pine Bluff Commercial/Ezra Mann Earlene Stennis, a retired Watson Chapel High School teacher, talks about her role in the civil rights movement and how she spread that message to students when she taught. Here she holds up a 1983 article about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. getting his holiday.

Earlene Stennis, a retired Watson Chapel High School teacher, took a moment outside her home on Third Avenue to reminisce participating in events during the struggle for equality and said she is not so sure the nation will have leaders like King ever again and that the movement has stalled.

She remembers listening to her father, who was active in the NAACP, speak to her and her siblings about civil rights, noting that the key to keeping equality a reality is education.

“The young black men and ladies’ experience is totally different because they are basically not taught about black history,” added Stennis. “They need to know the role models and the churches need to play a big role again.”

Stennis even spent time in the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, in Memphis, where King was assassinated, and met him when he spoke at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff when it was Arkansas Agricultural, Mechanical & Normal College. She noted that she never thought she’d live to see a black nominated as a major political party’s presidential candidate and is happy to see Sen. Barack Obama achieve the honor.

“I taught American government and one of our projects was to register all 18-year-olds to vote,” added Stennis. “I also worked with Daisy Bates, who ran the Arkansas State Press and helped the Little Rock Nine.”

Others surveyed Thursday had similar reactions to the his torical events.

Juanita Campbell, 56, a Pine Bluff resident who was spending time with her daughter and grandson at The Pines mall, remembers struggling to feel equal and to get an education which limited women to few jobs early on. She said it was amazing how people’s mindset has changed and is impressed with Obama’s rise to the nomination, which she did not think would happen in her lifetime.

Mark Cannon, owner and manager of Popcorn & More at The Pines, said that while he does not want to say King’s speech was in vain, he does not believe it resonates with the current generation. He said King would be very disappointed with the results and said that racism is a problem that is taught more than tolerance.

“We still have people believing Obama is not an American,” said Harriet Warren, a Pine Bluff resident, who was also at The Pines. “The nomination shows we’ve made progress but we still have a long way to go.”

Print this story   |   Email this story