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Zion Baptist Church honors legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Photo by Brett Dunlap West Virginia University at Parkersburg President Chris Gilmer was the featured speaker Sunday at Zion Baptist Church’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day service. He spoke of growing up in rural Mississippi and the impact many African-Americans had on his life.

PARKERSBURG — Sometimes it only takes one person to invoke change and if someone else joins with them amazing things can happen, the president of West Virginia University at Parkersburg said Sunday at Zion Baptist Church’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The service started with excerpts from King’s famous, “I Have a Dream” speech and included quotes from King, scripture readings, prayer, music and a praise dance performed by Shelly Shumaker.

“We remember what true love is,” Cleveland Rutherford said in the opening prayer. “We don’t have to be haters, we just have to live the dream Dr. Martin Luther King had.

“We are living that dream today just by being here, free.”

In her welcome message, organizer Cynthia Brown quoted King in how people need to continue to move forward and what are people doing for others.

Photo by Brett Dunlap Charesse Rutherford sang “Stand” Sunday at the Zion Baptist Church annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day service.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter,” she quoted. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

“The time is always right to do something right.”

WVU-P President Chris Gilmer said he did not feel worthy of speaking at an event honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is the enormity of the man and the vision that we are here to celebrate and whose life, in some small way, are here to emulate,” he said. “Dr. King said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Gilmer brought up the recent incident in Washington, D.C., where a group of boys were taunting an elder of the Omaha tribe who was chanting a prayer and playing a ceremonial drum to provide protection for a group of African-Americans who were reading the Bible.

Photo by Brett Dunlap Shelly Shumaker performed a praise dance Sunday at Zion Baptist Church’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day service. The piece showed the burdens many people carried with them including abuse and hatred as well as the need to let go of those things, through God’s grace, that were holding them back. She tied it to King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” from 1963 for peace, equality and humanity.

“When something like this happens it is hard to believe the arc of the moral universe is bending toward justice,” he said. “It is and we can never lose faith and never lose hope in that fact.”

Gilmer spoke of growing up in rural Mississippi and how his first-grade class at Forest Elementary School in Forest, Miss., was the first to be integrated. He had a dedicated and loving African-American teacher and sat next to a African-American girl who became a lifelong friend.

“I come from a place with a very troubled racial past,” Gilmer said.

He spoke of his mother and her drive to fight for equal rights for women and for African-Americans. She instilled in him a respect for all people.

Gilmer spoke about going with his mother to a grocery store, owned by an African-American family named Slaughter, at a time when many other white women in their community would not shop there. As a result, Olivia Slaughter and Peggy Gilmer became good friends.

Photo by Brett Dunlap Cynthia Brown, organizer of Zion Baptist Church’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day service, recited quotes from King that always touched her how people need to continue to move forward and what are people doing for others.

He and Olivia’s daughter Constance became close and consider each other a sibling because of how close their families were.

The Slaughter family had four generations who went to college while he was the first one in his family to graduate from college.

Constance Slaughter Harvey grew up to help integrate the University of Mississippi School of Law and filed many of the landmark civil rights lawsuits in Mississippi.

Gilmer said it started with a friendship between his mother and “Mama Olivia,” two women who won’t be known to the history books, but who left a mark on their community.

“They changed the course of two families, and by doing that they began to change the course of a whole community who became more open and more inclusive because of them,” Gilmer said.

He contrasted a world where police brutality exists while 100 women from various backgrounds were recently elected to Congress, including Native Americans and Muslims.

“This in the land of liberty and prosperity and hope and justice for all,” Gilmer said. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but Dr. King calls on us from his grave to help continue to bend it toward justice.

“It is not going to bend by itself. It is only going to bend if people like us stand up and bend it.”

Becoming a university president was the best way Gilmer said he could lift and help a generation of people.

He said he will never accept the notion that someone thinks they are not good enough to go to college.

“I hear those stories far too often,” he said. “When I hear those stories I say, ‘Look at me.’

“I was a statistic before I was even born. The low expectations society had for me were overshadowed by the high expectations of a mother who reached down and lifted me up and said…’You are good enough to do anything.”

Invoking King’s message, Gilmer said everyone should have the education they dream of and the opportunity to be what they want to be.

“I bet there is a Mama Olivia and a Mama Peggy somewhere in your story,” he said.

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