A scene from Ava DuVernay’s film “Selma.”

Selma, director Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed depiction of Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign to secure equal voting rights for African Americans, is the subject of five screenings, as well as a panel discussion, at �ֲ���ý from Feb. 27 through March 1.

The film will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 27; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28; and at 2 and 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 1, in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center at �ֲ���ý, 75 Russell St.

Associate Professor of Psychology Michael Sargent. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

The panel discussion by �ֲ���ý faculty, staff and students will immediately follow the first March 1 screening, also in Olin 104.

Sponsored by the �ֲ���ý Filmboard and the Office of Intercultural Education, the event is open to the public. Admission is $1. For more information, please contact ckenyon@bates.edu or kpayne@bates.edu.

The �ֲ���ý panelists are:
•    Marcus Bruce, Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies;
•    Stephen Engel, assistant professor of politics;
•    Hilmar Jensen, associate professor of history;
•    Gwen Lexow, associate athletic director and Title IX officer;
•    Joshua Manson, a �ֲ���ý senior from Hastings-On-Hudson, New York;
•    and moderator Claudia Calhoun, visiting assistant professor of rhetoric.

DuVernay’s Academy Award-nominated film chronicles three tumultuous months in 1965, when King (David Oyelowo) led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement.

“The film has renewed broader questions about the historical accuracy of films based on true events, and how much freedom a director should take in altering events to tell a compelling story,” says Michael Sargent, associate professor of psychology at �ֲ���ý. Sargent organized the �ֲ���ý event with Charles Kenyon, a senior from East Amherst, New York, and Kai Payne of Jamaica, New York.

“One of us who organized this panel heard a story of �ֲ���ý students going to see the film and at least one wanting an opportunity to discuss it then,” Sargent says. “This is our effort to give �ֲ���ý students, faculty and staff, as well as interested members of the surrounding community, a chance to see Selma and engage in a thoughtful discussion of its content.

“And having a panel that collectively has such broad-ranging expertise means that our discussion will be grounded in historical context.”

As debaters from �ֲ���ý and Morehouse colleges made clear on MLK Day, discussing Martin Luther King’s dream raises more questions than it answers.

Debater Shannon Griffin ’16, left, listens to an objection Monday during the Reverend Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate between �ֲ���ý and Morehouse colleges in the Olin Arts Center. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

“King didn’t want to change people, he wanted a better society,” said Morehouse sophomore Rami Blair, who went on to quote King’s own words: “The law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.”

Representing the opposition, Blair and Morehouse junior Curtis O’Neal argued against the day’s motion: “This house believes King’s Dream is unattainable.”

Yet the core of the Jan. 20 debate was not so much whether King’s dream was unattainable, but what the dream was to begin with. The teams sparred over the definition of the dream and what King meant when he wished that his children “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The Morehouse debaters pointed out that King was, in Blair’s words, a “practical optimist,” not the radical idealist many perceive him to be. The dream was to create equality of opportunity under the law — not a color-blind utopia.

�ֲ���ý’ Brooks Quimby Debate Council team supported the motion, arguing that the oppression within U.S. education, economic and criminal justice systems makes true equality impossible.

Benjamin Elijah Mays ’20.

Represented by Stephanie Wesson ’14 of Mount Vernon, N.H., and Shannon Griffin ’16 of Philadelphia, the �ֲ���ý team maintained that the dream was an idealized vision of a U.S. in which race no longer matters.

The annual tradition of the Reverend Benjamin Elijah Mays Debate honors the man who is at the center of the historic friendship between �ֲ���ý and Morehouse.

Former captain of �ֲ���ý’ debate team, Mays ’20 became the president of Atlanta’s historically black Morehouse College in 1940. He was a national figure in the civil rights movement as a theorist and as spiritual adviser and friend to King, who graduated from Morehouse in 1948.

Jan Hovden, �ֲ���ý professor of rhetoric and director of debate, explained that the day’s motion was intentionally provocative in order to illustrate the power of “the spoken word above that of violent revolution.”

Professor Kenneth Newby, director of Morehouse’s forensics program, emphasized the importance of such cultural and intellectual exchange. “We consider �ֲ���ý College a true friend of Morehouse College.”

The debate was in keeping with themes presented by that morning’s keynote speaker Gary Younge. An award-winning journalist and author, Younge argued that King was far more complex and polarizing than history tends to remember.

Journalist Gary Younge offers the Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote address, an analysis of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in the Gomes Chapel at �ֲ���ý on Jan. 20. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

More than 50 years later, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom has become as much cultural touchstone as historical milestone.

Even as its context and complexities have faded from mass awareness, the March has evolved into a symbol of progress for civil rights. Epitomizing this perception is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, his best-known address.

�ֲ���ý dedicated its 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day programming to the March, the Speech and their relevance today. And two speakers during the morning keynote session on Jan. 20 offered quite different perspectives on the events of Aug. 28, 1963.

As always, Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2014 at �ֲ���ý encompassed a rich schedule of programming that included Sunday evening’s memorial service and on Monday, a debate with Morehouse College, numerous workshops and panels, and the sold-out evening performance by Sankofa. Learn more:

• A slideshow of MLK Day 2014 events at �ֲ���ý.
• Video of the keynote session and the �ֲ���ý-Morehouse debate.
• The full schedule of activities.
• More about the day’s participants.
• Members of Sankofa preview their performance.
• A report from the debate.

An inspired and inspirational view came from someone else named King who happened to be on the scene in D.C. that day — U.S. Sen. Angus King.

�ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer chats with U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) during the college’s 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session on Jan. 20 in the Gomes Chapel. King offered reminiscences of the 1963 March on Washington. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In remarks to about 400 people in Gomes Chapel, King said that hundreds of thousands of people came together in the nation’s capital that hot August day in the service of an “idea that’s important and still radical today: All men and women are created equal.”

A more granular view came from the keynote speaker, English journalist Gary Younge, author of a 2013 book that examines both the history of the March and the Speech, and their place in today’s context.

It’s true that the “Dream” speech marks a transition after which “the question of American apartheid is no longer alive,” said Younge. Yet, if legal segregation is dead, racism is alive and well, and the kind of profound systemic change that King dreamed of still eludes us.

The keynote session began with jazz by the Three Point Trio and a welcome by keynote host and Associate Dean of Students James Reese. Next, the college’s new dean of the faculty reminded his listeners that �ֲ���ý explicitly links education and service, privilege and obligation.

“Hand in hand with study and contemplation is informed and ethical action,” said Matthew Auer, who came on board as dean and vice president for academic affairs in July 2013.

With a rhetorical tip of the hat to the �ֲ���ý mission statement and Martin Luther King mentor Benjamin Mays ’20, Auer said, “the emancipating potential of the liberal arts is not a spectator sport.” That theme became a motif of the morning.

President Clayton Spencer introduced Angus King, former Maine governor elected Independent senator in 2012. King, who as a 19-year-old watched the March on Washington program from his perch in a tree on the National Mall, reprised his r, at which he represented the Senate.

“As it was once said of Churchill, Martin Luther King on that day mobilized the English language and marched it into war,” King said, “and in the process caught the conscience of a nation.”

Midway through the program, Acting Multifaith Chaplain Emily Wright-Magoon echoed Auer’s theme as she read pledges for action gathered from the audience at Sunday night’s MLK worship service.

Accompanying Wright-Magoon were Gospelaires Brittney Davis ’14, Megan Guynes ’11 and Courtney Parsons ’15, who sang a luminous “This Little Light of Mine” in three-part harmony. This welcome addition recognized the role of women in the civil rights movement generally, and specifically honored three singers present at the March: Mahalia Jackson, Camilla Williams and Marian Anderson.

Members of the Gospelaires perform during �ֲ���ý’ 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session. From left, Brittney Davis ’14, Megan Guynes ’11 and Courtney Parsons ’15. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

Charles Nero, head of the MLK Day planning committee at �ֲ���ý and professor of rhetoric and American cultural studies, let on that keynote speaker Younge had originally planned to speak at �ֲ���ý during last year’s MLK events. But Younge, who writes for the British newspaper The Guardian, instead covered President Obama’s inauguration.

The timing was advantageous, though, because in the meantime Younge got a book published: The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream.

At �ֲ���ý, Younge painted a picture of events behind the March that, paradoxically, made it seem both inevitable and fortuitous.

For instance, local civil rights protests in the months before the March were cresting, all but necessitating some kind of grand national gesture. Quoting author Ryszard Kapuscinski, Younge cited the psychological tipping point where “a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid . . . Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution.”

“People don’t know when there’s history in the making. They just know they have to do something,” Younge added, referring to Sen. King’s earlier exhortation to seize opportunities for action when they appear.

Serendipity helped to define the March as well. King, for example, didn’t initially plan to use the “I Have a Dream” language, a staple of his repertoire, during the March. And yet, at the right moment, he set aside his notes and his lecturer persona, and preached those immortal words — perhaps persuaded by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who sat nearby urging him on.

Occurring during an event designed as King’s introduction to the nation, the Speech had something for everybody. For patriots, roots in foundational American values; for liberals, appeals to the labor and peace movements. And African Americans could be supremely proud of this demonstration of black will and intelligence.

Appreciating the presenters during the 2014 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote session at �ֲ���ý College. (Sarah Crosby/�ֲ���ý College)

But today’s exalted view of King and the Speech differs dramatically from its perception five decades ago, Younge pointed out. In the 1960s, King was unpopular among whites, a sentiment exacerbated by his growing opposition to the Vietnam War, which many Americans supported, and to the capitalist system.

Younge concluded that the nation has mistaken a victory in the battle against segregation for a victory in the war against racism. By many measures, African Americans have gained little in terms of prosperity and well-being since the March.

It’s true, Younge concluded, that “King’s speech was an appeal to hearts and minds, the vision of a society in which race was not the defining and crippling factor that it once was, and to some extent still remains.”

“But he did not dream of better people. He dreamt of a better system.”

Dick Gregory, the African American comedian who transcended show-business success to become a prominent activist for social justice and civil rights, performs at �ֲ���ý College at 7 p.m. Monday, May 23, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell Street.

Sponsored by the �ֲ���ý Program in African American Studies and the Multifaith Chaplaincy, the event is open to the public at no cost, but reservations are required. Please contact 207-786-8272.

Gregory was one of a handful of black comedians who broke from the minstrelsy tradition to redefine the role of African American comedy. Throughout his career, he has used satire to comment on current political and race issues, turning his incisive humor and fame to good advantage in the civic arena.

Today, the 78-year-old Gregory is also recognized as an entrepreneur with expertise in nutrition, but his focus remains on social and racial justice.

Born in St. Louis, Gregory began performing comedy in the 1950s while serving in the Army. His show-business breakthrough came in 1961 with a successful stint, playing to primarily white audiences, at Chicago’s Playboy Club. That led to a three-year Playboy contract that brought Gregory national recognition.

“Gregory was, in his words, ‘the first flatfooter’ — no dancing, no shuffling — to play white clubs, a break with the singing and dancing routines of his black predecessors,” New York Times reporter Bruce Headlam wrote in 2009.

Engaged in social justice issues even in high school, Gregory later became deeply engaged in the civil rights movement. He took part in voter registration drives and sit-ins to protest segregation in the South. When local governments in Mississippi stopped distributing surplus federal food to poor blacks in areas where the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was encouraging voter registration, Gregory chartered a plane to bring in tons of food.

His autobiography Nigger (written with Robert Lipsyte; Pocket Books) appeared in 1963 and became the No. 1 best-selling book in America. Over the decades it has sold more than 7 million copies. Gregory explained his choice for the title in the forward to the book: “Whenever you hear the word ‘Nigger,’ you’ll know they’re advertising my book.”

His other books include a subsequent autobiography, Callus On My Soul: A Memoir (with Sheila Moses; Kensington, 2003).

He has marched, spoken and fasted to support causes ranging from the Vietnam War to world hunger. Among other initiatives, in 1992 he began a program called Campaign for Human Dignity to fight crime in St. Louis neighborhoods.

In Iran he fasted and prayed to persuade the Ayatollah Khomeini to release the American embassy staff who had been taken hostage in 1979. On Sept. 10, 2010, he undertook a hunger strike to protest U.S. government reports about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He intends to maintain the protest until his 80th birthday, in 2012.

A vegetarian and nutritional consultant, Gregory’s interest in food issues bore fruit in 1984 when he founded Health Enterprises Inc., a company that distributed weight-loss products. In 1987 he introduced the Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet, a powdered diet mix, which was immensely profitable. That year Gregory made headlines with his public effort to help Walter Hudson, a 1,200-pound man, lose weight.

He has homes in Washington, D.C., and in Plymouth, Mass., where he lives with Lily, his wife of 50 years. He performs about 200 shows a year.

“It’s been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.” The hopeful words of the Sam Cooke song sung by soloist Megan Guynes ’11 made a fitting opening for the Jan. 16 Memorial Service of Worship that began Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances at �ֲ���ý.

The centerpiece was the Rev. James Lawson’s sermon. Lawson was an important advocate for nonviolent activism during the civil rights movement, and was instrumental to the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960.

A personal friend of King’s, Lawson told the �ֲ���ý audience how King had first encouraged him to move down South and continue his work at the heart of the emerging civil rights movement. Lawson praised King’s work as “breaking down barriers of fear, silence, racism and sexism, and lifting up a new era.”

Lawson also emphasized that the campaign goes on. “I want you to understand that to celebrate Martin Luther King’s life is to celebrate a movement made up of hundreds of thousands of people,” Lawson told his attentive audience.

Pointing to the many issues of violence, fear and injustice that our nation continues to struggle with, he said, “We, the American people, have not permitted the slogan ‘equality, liberty and justice for all’ to be the slogan of our land.”

He urged, “Destroy what destroys us, and replace it with instruments that allow human creativity and joy.”

Taking place in the �ֲ���ý Chapel, the service was attended by 175 or so members of the �ֲ���ý and Lewiston-Auburn communities. The audience was also treated to inspirational readings from students and faculty, music provided by �ֲ���ý ensembles the Crosstones and the Gospelaires, and a dance performance by �ֲ���ý’ liturgical dance troupe, Justified.

— Gabrielle Otto ’11

In case you think that all the heavy lifting in the cause of social justice is over and done with, the Rev. James Lawson has news for you.

“I am absolutely convinced” that the 21st century will be the time for a social justice movement that overshadows the transformative campaigns of the previous century, Lawson told a �ֲ���ý College audience gathered on Jan. 17 to celebrate the life and work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

It will be a movement, he proclaimed in his keynote speech, even “greater in its intensity and its power of truth” than the civil rights movement in which he played a key role. In an effort that spans all faiths and targets all prejudices, “we must work for the dismantling of the systems of oppression in the United States,” said who worked closely with King in the 1950s and ’60s.

More King Day coverage:

At �ֲ���ý for King Day was a second keynote speaker, Asher Kolieboi, who works for equal rights for the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-questioning community. The pairing of Lawson and the 20-something Kolieboi symbolized the passing of the social justice torch down through the generations.

Also on hand was Vinie Burrows, the actress and activist, who moderated a discussion and will offer and elsewhere in Maine during the week. A debate and a student performance Monday and a worship service Sunday evening featuring a sermon by Lawson were also in the plan.

Lawson’s keynote provided the right message for a King Day observance meant to spur action. Borrowing its first half from reggae singer Bob Marley and its second half from King, the theme for the day was “Get Up. Stand Up. The Fierce Urgency of Now.”

Listeners also heard much about the roles of Christ and of Gandhi in the philosophy of non-violence as practiced by the keynote speakers.

�ֲ���ý President Elaine Tuttle Hansen and Dean of Faculty Jill Reich offered opening remarks during the morning keynote session in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. Hansen pointed out that �ֲ���ý — always open to men and women of all races and religions — was distinctively qualified as a place to celebrate and reflect on King’s legacy. Hansen noted that the Jan. 8 massacre in Tucson “reminds us that the world needs the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King more than ever.”

“We need both Dr. King’s lessons and his persistence. No matter how dire the situation, he said,

Reich enjoined the Olin Arts Center audience of some 250 people to step beyond the ceremony of a single day and turn inspiration into action. “The inspirational words in which we find comfort are not enough,” she said. “We must find ways to live them — not just on special days like this one, but every hour, every minute, day in, day out.”

An elegant figure in a pinstripe suit and Western boots, Lawson wore a wireless microphone so he could pace the Olin stage as he talked. His address — titled, after King’s book, — ranged effortlessly from past to present, from his own story to that of the civil rights movement, and thence to the nagging unmet demands of social justice.

The theme that shaped his talk was the deep imperative he felt from Christ and Gandhi to the exercise of . “You have before you a follower of Jesus who began resisting injustice around the age of 4, 78 years ago,” he said.

After he struck someone who used a racial slur against him, Lawson’s mother forbade further violence and urged that he wield brotherly love instead, “and make it work for every issue in my life, experiment with it, and make it a form of strength instead of weakness.” That was the seed of a lifetime of non-violence that was enriched by Gandhi and bloomed into full flower during the civil rights movement.

Though he rejects any political labels for himself, Lawson was eloquent in cataloging the evils still perpetrated by Western society and the white-male power structure. “The major obstacle to the advancement of the human race in the world today is white Western civilization,” he said, while acknowledging that he is himself a product of that power structure.

Anticipating Kolieboi’s talk several hours later, Lawson didn’t spare a conservative evangelical community that has, he believes, lost sight of Christianity’s essence. “One might ask, why does Christianity put all the weight on ‘Are you saved?’ instead of on doing God’s work on Earth?” he wondered. “It seems to me that the notion of the Kingdom of God is that there is no area of human life that does not benefit from learning the ways of truth and compassion.”

In describing his own work as a co-director of the , which periodically brings young LGBTQ advocates to colleges and universities to advocate for fairness and diversity, (now LGBTQ community coordinator at Oberlin College) paid explicit tribute to Lawson’s gift to American activism of non-violence.

But in contrast to Lawson’s free-ranging review of a life in social activism, Kolieboi hewed closely to the values and operations of the Equality Ride and its parent organization,. Describing the prejudice against the LGBTQ community at some evangelical Christian schools, he admitted that it was an education even for him to discover the harsh consequences suffered by anyone expressing same-sex attraction — expulsion, suspension, loss of financial aid, compulsory “conversion therapy.”

Pointing to racist and homophobic sentiments that still persist even among social activists, Kolieboi echoed Lawson’s call for a social justice movement that would transcend specific communities of interest to strive for equality, justice and freedom for all people.

“We are not single-issue people,” he said. “We can’t talk about LGBTQ rights without talking about access to education, or about healthcare or the prison-industrial complex.”

He ended his address with a maxim from Napoleon Bonaparte: “There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run, the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.”

Breakout sessions after each keynote, and finally a late-afternoon plenary session with Lawson and Kolieboi, sought to digest and expand upon the speakers’ thoughts.

led one morning session. The petite actress wielded an outsize personal authority that kept the session moving along despite the group’s initial reticence to speak. She asked the group of about 40 students and Lewiston-Auburn community members how they would respond to the charge to action that Lawson had issued. Like society in miniature, the resulting discussion was a collision between prescriptions for action and descriptions of the obstacles.

In the end, it boiled down to a question simple but profound: Why can’t students make friends outside their familiar circles? An African American student applauded �ֲ���ý’ efforts to diversify the student body, but said that in spite of growing diversity on campus, the races rarely mix in Commons. “Is it really diversity if it’s not integrated?” she wondered.

The burden is on students, a male student replied. “The point of school is to expand our horizons. People need to challenge themselves.”

About 40 people attended an afternoon breakout moderated by Erica Rand, professor of art and visual culture, and of Brooklyn, N.Y. Focusing on the struggle to expand gay rights and on issues with conservative Christians, the session was sparked up by the contributions of LGBTQ activists from the community.

One of those activists offered cause for optimism, pointing out that despite the considerable prejudice still in place, the LGBTQ cause has been met “with the fastest change in opinion in American history. We are making tremendous progress.”

“We have to thank the civil rights and women’s rights movements,” someone else said. “This is the third time we’ve been through this.”

But the discussion nevertheless returned, inevitably, to the basic need to spark meaningful action.

“It’s hard to create that safe space where people can just be honest” about race, women’s issues and so on, said Alexandre-Brutus. “How can we get people engaged?”

“Maybe do this more than once a year?” another student suggested.

— Additional reporting by Allison Lizars ’11

Not the viewbook �ֲ���ý where faculty and students scale ever-higher peaks of achievement. Instead, a more prosaic place where, in back offices, kitchens, and workshops, College staffers make the academic fireworks possible.

And it’s a place whose achievements, perhaps, reflect what Benjamin Mays ’20 had in mind when he exhorted mourners at King’s funeral to make the civil rights leader’s unfinished work “truly our own.”

President Hansen considers a comment during the King Day workshop on diversity efforts in the �ֲ���ý workplace. At right is Ellen Peters ’87, director of the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

President Elaine Tuttle Hansen convened “Institutionalizing Unfinished Work” to illuminate those achievements. As �ֲ���ý has striven to make the campus more diverse and inclusive, Hansen explained, she has been struck by the intensity College staffers have brought to that effort. For the MLK Day workshop, she asked seven College administrators to share challenges and revelations they’ve encountered along the way.

The King holiday, Hansen said later, afforded a plum opportunity “to explore all the places on campus where people really are trying to do the unfinished work of social justice and inclusion.”

We heard from Carmita McCoy, who is helping �ֲ���ý develop a concept from the Benjamin Mays Initiative: “swing deans” who help recruit a new class for Admissions one year, then spend the next year as a dean of students mentoring that same class, especially members of underrepresented groups.

Something she hadn’t expected, she explained, was the concern some African American parents expressed that their children wouldn’t be able to maintain their faith practices at �ֲ���ý.

Bob Pallone, who works in Advancement, wondered how to convince alums of color that today’s �ֲ���ý is more welcoming than the one they knew. “How do we understand what they experienced?” he asked. “And how do we convey what’s happening now?”

The diversity of diversities resonated throughout the workshop. In realigning staff assignments for the new dining Commons, said Dining Services head Christine Schwartz, she has encouraged her people to try out for jobs they really want.

Implementing this enlightened policy, though, sometimes brought Schwartz up against the effects of old, harsh inequalities — such as a worker who had gone through public school labeled as a special-ed student on the basis of a single, specific disability.

The diversity of diversities includes job classification. As Carmen Purdy, a presenter and the coordinator of the affirmative action office, pointed out, �ֲ���ý staff feel empowered simply to be heard.

The convener agreed. “I talk about �ֲ���ý all the time, and I rarely have an opportunity to talk publicly about people who are behind the scenes,” Hansen said afterward. “Quite invisible but so important to the college, just kind of making everything else happen.”

Including, now more than ever, some unfinished work that just can’t wait.

“Selfishness and greed have toppled many great empires in the past,” Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder Morris Dees told a �ֲ���ý audience on May 8.

Unless fairness for all people prevails, he said, frustration among the disadvantaged here could rise to a tragic degree. “One day, there may not be one skyscraper left in this nation.”

Dees wove stories from the Bible, from the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and from his own biography into a compelling, sometimes emotional address lasting nearly an hour.

Some 300 members of the campus community and friends gathered in the College Chapel on a summery afternoon to hear . He was the keynote speaker for the second annual symposium, this year titled Unswerving Values, Changing Times, convened by President Elaine Tuttle Hansen to address the vital work of advancing diversity at �ֲ���ý.

Dees, raised on an Alabama cotton farm, is a lawyer who co-founded the in 1971. Dedicated to seeking legal redress against hate groups, and in more recent years to providing programming that

Dees’ talk at �ֲ���ý resembled the best kind of memoir, as he used tragedies and triumphs from his own life to shape a larger narrative about America’s history of racial injustice, his own journey to the awareness of inequity and the continuing need for love and justice in society.

Titled “With Justice for All in Our Multicultural Nation,” the address began with Dees describing one Vera Belle Johnson, his teacher in a three-room
schoolhouse in Shorter, Ala. Johnson, he explained, “wanted us to grow up to be good citizens . . . fair and honest.”

Christian values and abstention from alcohol and tobacco were high on Mrs. Johnson’s list, said Dees, recalling the day he challenged her with the seeming contradiction in the story of Jesus turning water into wine.

“Yes, Morris,” she retorted, “but we would have thought more highly of him if he hadn’t done that.”

Equally memorable but more influential were Johnson’s efforts to convince Dees and her other pupils of the real value of the words in the Pledge of Allegiance: “one nation, with liberty and justice for all.”

It took the work of civil rights leader King, Dees continued, to “ensure that America lived up to its promises of equality written in the Constitution.”

One day King told a crowd in a Memphis church about seeing the distant Promised Land from a mountaintop. He said, “I may not get there with you, but it’s going to be a land of fairness and justice and liberty for all.” King was assassinated the next day.

Similarly, Dees said, Moses brought his people out of Egypt and to the river shore opposite the Promised Land, but they didn’t cross. Instead, the Jews wandered in the wilderness for another 40 years before they crossed the River Jordan.

“It is ironic today,” Dees said, “that we are standing on the river and, so to speak, looking across, and it’s been 40 years since the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King left us.”

“Are we going to turn and go back? Are we going to wander around in this wilderness, where we’ve made some progress but not a lot of progress, in human rights? Or are we going to step out and attempt to make changes?”

A highlight of Dees’ talk was his 1981 defense of Vietnamese immigrants who had fled their country after the communist victory and had overcome considerable hardship to establish themselves as shrimpers in Texas. The Ku Klux Klan then employed the usual tactics to force them out of the industry.

Dees and the shrimpers were at the threshold of a legal victory, in the form of a federal injunction against the white supremacists, when a group of
Vietnamese businesspeople asked that the lawsuit be dropped. Why? Fear of retaliation against their own businesses.

“Please, please don’t drop your lawsuit,” Dees implored the shrimpers, using King’s example to illustrate the ultimate power of the U.S. legal system. But, he told the �ֲ���ý audience, “I could see fear in their faces. It wasn’t me who had to live in that community.”

In the end, the shrimpers hung tough and the injunction went through, Dees said. On the day the shrimping season opened, as an early fog lifted, he was among the crowd on the waterfront in Kemah, Texas, as the shrimp fleet including the Vietnamese boats received a priest’s blessing and headed out to sea. “I not only felt proud to be their lawyer, I felt proud to be an American,” he said.

Dees’ dominant theme came to the fore as he interpreted the Old Testament story of the prophet Amos. A farmer visiting the city of Bethel, Amos was appalled by the gap he saw between the rich establishment and the disenfranchised poor.

In Dees’ version, Amos told the powers-that-be that “you’ve got a good thing going here. But you won’t get to keep what you have and pass it down to the future generations unless you’re fair to all the people. Because if you’re not fair to all the people, they’re going to take what you have away from you.”

“Amos spoke to the people of that ancient city in the words that Dr. King chose to speak to us,” Dees told the �ֲ���ý audience, “when he stood on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and begged this nation to live up to its promises of equality.”

“Amos said to those people, ‘Don’t be satisfied, folks, until justice rolls down like the waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ ”

Dees’ theme was anticipated in opening remarks by President Hansen. She reminded the gathering of the substance of last year’s symposium, which explored the changing demographics of the student population.

“This afternoon we come together again to that perpetual task of changing and preparing ourselves to do the right thing,” she said, “which requires not just reacting to what we think may be coming, but proactively building an educational environment to house and nurture the capacities needed to sustain a thriving multicultural nation and a peaceful global society.”

Offering a brief introduction to Dees’ life and accomplishments, Trustee Dana Peterson Moore ’79 described Dees as “an eyewitness and a warrior in the civil rights movement.”

She told Dees, “We’re very hungry to learn from you how justice for all can be secured in these changing times.”

Morris Dees

Weaving stories from the Bible, from the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and from his own biography, Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder Morris Dees presents a compelling, sometimes emotional address at �ֲ���ý College on May 8 as the Presidential Symposium keynote speaker. From MPBN’s Speaking in Maine. (Total time: 1:07:42) [More…]