TCRP - West Texas 'I Have a Dream' Gala

Civil Rights Leader reflects

on Martin Luther King Jr.

BY COREY PAUL Insightful comments preceded a civil rights leader's speech Saturday night, and Jim Harrington, the director of Texas Civil Rights Project, delivered them: "Martin Luther King (Jr.), our great hero: there were people that helped form him, there were people who helped guide him to make him who he was, and that's what we're about," Harrington said to the crowd at Salon 20/20 on Grant Avenue. "... We can't just come every year and commemorate our heroes. We have to accept their challenges." When it came his turn at the lectern, this became a point the Rev. William Lawson repeatedly acknowledged and emphasized but from the perspective of a man who knew King before he was assassinated in 1968.

View Photo Album @ Pinterest: Carol Uranga, President of LULAC Council 4451, Rev. William A. Lawson, Cynthia Lucero, Jim Harrington, and Hispanic Heritage member Sylvia Acosta

"I would be interested to know what Martin would think if he came back right now, in 2013. My suspicion is that he would be a little bit flattered, but he would be disappointed," Lawson said. "Much of what we have done in his memory is to name streets and buildings and a whole lot of things like that after Martin Luther King ... We have made him into a saint. But once again, pointing to Mr. Harrington, who already made this speech, we ought to do a whole lot more than simply glorify Martin Luther King." There's a long way to go, with issues of fair housing, family violence, class division, underfunded schools, voter suppression and what Lawson called "the new Jim Crow": a legal system that funnels a disproportionate amount of minorities into jails and prisons. The struggle for social justice is far different than when Lawson served in the 1960s as the director of the Baptist Student Union at Texas Southern University, an era when Lawson would also found the Wheeler Avenue Baptist church, orchestrate the Civil Rights Movement in Houston, and march with King. That was a violent time with openly endorsed segregation. "There's always a danger that without the same obstacles you could become spoiled," Lawson said before his speech. "It's easy for us to forget that there is still a poor class, people in jails and mentally ill people -- all sorts of people being held down." But woven into Lawson's call to carry the dream forward were fascinating memories of King. "He was the kind of person who would lead a march for people who had to ride a bus," Lawson said. And if you knew anything about his background, this man would never have had to ride a bus in his life." He discussed the selection of Rosa Parks as the face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and shared everyday anecdotes, like the way King disliked how his colleagues called him Mike, his birth name. The Texas Civil Rights Project brought Lawson with help from Una Voz Unida and the Black Cultural Council of Odessa to for its second annual gala, folding into the community celebration of Martin Luther King Day. Many attendees belonged to civic and governmental groups, such as the Black Chamber of Commerce, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Odessa Police Department, and the Black Leadership Council of the University of Texas of The Permian Basin. Lawson said he considered the crowd's makeup an inspiration. "I'm glad to be in Odessa, because as I see blacks and Hispanics working together with Anglos in this group it says a lot about your sense of social justice."