East St. Louis community celebrates the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, the greater East St. Louis community came out Monday to pay tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and celebrate his contributions when he led the civil rights movement.

The event, titled ``Together We Can Be the Dream,” was held at St. Paul Baptist Church at 1500 Bond Ave. in East St. Louis

“It was just earth shaking, world changing,” Alvin Parks Jr., co-chairman of the MLK Commemorative Program Committee East St. Louis, said in an interview about King and his contributions. “When you think about a lot of the advances we enjoy today, he and the people who worked with him were largely responsible.

“When you also think about the kinds of things they got us involved in... They were the kinds of things that changed the world and continue to change the world,” Parks said. “We want to make sure the light and the contributions and the legacy of Dr. King are always known to the greater East St. Louis community.”

Parks said examples of areas in which Black Americans have advanced as a result of King and the people who worked with him are “voting rights, the quest for economic justice, social justice, breaking down the walls of discrimination and separatism and certain classes of people, starting with Black folk, being diminished and oppressed.”

“He (King) and all the individuals who worked with him were so valiant,” Parks said. “We need to uplift that.”

Keynote speaker for the event was the Rev. Gary Gaston, pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church.

Gaston referred to the Book of Joshua, from the Old Testament of the Bible. “Joshua and his crew marched around Jericho wall and the wall came tumbling down,” the pastor said.

“There’s strength in unity,” he said. “It took a collective effort- unity amongst the Israelites - to bring the wall down. One man could not bring it down. It took a collective effort to bring it down Therefore, in our community, it takes a collective effort to realize Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream and not just one person.”

King did not take on the tasks by himself, but he was one of the primary leaders in ensuring that injustice was tackled, Gaston said.

“We have a heart problem with our country. We need to show more concern for the plight of all people,” Gaston said. “We have a moral epidemic and a social epidemic in our country. It takes a unified body, a unified nation to bring those things where they should be.”

Gaston went on to say, “No man is an island. No man stands alone. We are all our brother’s keepers, including our white brothers and sisters and other races of people. We all have to look out for one another.”

Gaston said there’s been some progress in the battle for equality since the early days of the civil rights movement, but ``within our nation, there is not enough progress.”

“ I feel there are still a lot of veiled issues that still exist. Things like social justice, inequality in the way Blacks are treated within the criminal justice system, the inequality in school funding, are all things we still have to do a lot of work for social justice, for criminal reform, because the balance is not equal.

“It is too much toward one side of the world versus the other. There is still a lot of fight that we must do to gain equality in our country,” Gaston said. “ We have to continue the fight for social justice, for criminal reform, for equality in all things, including healthcare. We can’t get tired. We can’t get complacent.”

Asked what he thought King might tell the nation today, Gaston said. “Keep pushing,”.

“We as a nation must unify to accomplish our mission. Dr. King gave us the blueprint. We have everything we need. All we need to do is march on to the mountain top,” Gaston said.

“Keep fighting. Don’t stop. We must pick up the torch and unify ourselves, not only for injustices by other races, but injustices within our own community. We have to unify ourselves socially, politically.”

Gaston said he has faith in young people. “I think this generation’s one of the first generations who are non-biased. In some ways, they set the examples for us. We need to galvanize them so they can walk with us and learn from our our history and where we’ve been.”

Lillian Parks, general chairman of the East St. Louis MLK program, said the theme of this year’s celebration means a lot to her, especially the word `Dream.”

“We’re still dreaming in this country,” she said. “We still have to do some work to one day have the dream Dr. King spoke about. His dream named everything equal. The dream means peace and being for real equal in this country.”.

Parks said the program in East St. Louis was started in 1968 . She said her late twin sister, Vivian Adams, and Homer Randolph, who was a civil rights leader, teacher and District 189 school board member in East St. Louis, started the event.

Park said it is important to remember King and celebrate the many contributions he made to advance equality.

“We were taught pride,” she said. “We learned about people in the Black community who invented refrigerators and clocks. We did that. We knew we had good sense. We knew we had determination.”

To obtain the dream, all races have to come together and work as one for fairness and equality in all things for all people, she said.

Parks said because of King and others, the nation saw its first Black president, Barack Obama; its first Black female Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson; its first Black vice president, Kamala Harris; its first Black U.S. House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and many other examples of Black people in top leadership roles in the country.

Parks remembers that even though King and his team worked diligently for equality for all races, it took a collective fight from the people to get his birthday recognized as a federal holiday.

She said the people did not give up though. It was a collective effort that made it happen.

Alvin Parks said: “We cannot simply let it be something that we see in a history book or something we think about every 20 years. We need to recognize the man and his contributions at least annually. Then collectively, we have to do the work to make the dream a reality.”

Parks hopes people left the ceremony with respect for King’s contributions and inspiration to live great lives themselves individually, as well as collectively.

Four students wrote essays using the theme of the event. One of them, Jerell Jackson, from East St.Louis Charter School, won a $1,000 scholarship. Kameron Dixson, from East St.Louis Senior High School, won a $500 scholarship. Both are seniors.

The scholarships are funded, in part, by donations from the community. Donations can be made to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Committee, 2029 La Plains Drive, East St. Louis.

This story was originally published January 16, 2023 at 9:34 PM.