Celebration pays tribute to life, legacy of Dr. King

The Rev. Dr. Jerry Grimes was a Goldsboro High School student when he first read one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sermons that was a reflection on his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Grimes said the sermon so moved him that it prompted him to read some of Dr. King’s less well-known sermons.

It also sent him on a two-decade journey chasing “Dr. King’s ghost” — a journey that included traveling to places King journeyed to and talking to people who knew and even mentored King.

Grimes, senior pastor at Peter’s Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Wallace, said he studied as well a Dr. King who was hated by J. Edgar Hoover and who was the subject of the counter-intelligence program.

Even some black leaders spoke out against Dr. King, but now it has “become fashionable” for some to love Dr. King now that he is dead, Grimes attested during his Sunday afternoon address to those attending the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration as he took them on that journey with him.

Sponsored by the Mount Olive Chapter of the Carver High School Alumni and Friends Association, the celebration was held at Holy Ghost Cathedral on East James Street.

Grimes said if his message had a title it would be entitled “The Virtually Unpayable Cost of Peace.”

“Peace, beloved, is expensive,” he stressed. “Peace requires regular payments and it is expensive.”

Grimes paid tribute to those who serve in the nation’s Armed Force saying that peace is not free.

However, peace cannot be achieved through violence, and no matter how much force is used, history has taught that whether won or lost, one war just leads to another, he said.

However, peace does not mean inaction, and there is a difference between passiveness and passivity, Grimes pointed out during his speech.

Passiveness means that one will not engage in violence, but at the same time one will speak out about injustice, he said.

Peace takes action and requires empathizing with someone who may look differently than ourselves, who may speak different — not just empathizing, but putting ourselves into someone else’s situation so we can appreciate the humanness of someone else, Grimes said

Peace is deliberate, daring and bold and requires an unyielding love, he continued.

“I think for as much as reflect upon the optimism of Dr. King, I hope that we would also take into consideration that Dr. King also dealt with the pragmatic issues of trying to be peaceful in a violent world,” Grimes asserted.

One can be peaceful and still be angry, and violence angered Dr. King, he said.

Toward the end of his life Dr. King took to wearing only black suits, having emptied his closet of most of his other others, Grimes pointed out to the gathered crowd.

He had only $500 in his checking account and would tell his closest friends that he was preparing himself for his maker and had no more need for earthly things, Grimes said.

“And in this pessimism following the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and which so often we reflect upon that speech and that it was not even Dr. King’s first time speaking in Washington, D.C.”

King had not intended to deliver that speech during the 1963 march, Grimes said.

“It is said that Mahalia Jackson could be heard somewhere in the crowd saying, ‘Martin. Why don’t you tell us about the dream that you had?’ The Rev. Andrew Young admittedly said he had heard that speech at least 19 different times.

“But there was something about that moment when Dr. King decided to deliver that speech that day. Four weeks later the response to that speech was the 16th St. Baptist Church (in Birmingham, Alabama) bombing in which four innocent girls were killed on a Sunday morning.”

On Christmas Eve 1967, his last Christmas Eve, Dr. King, who was then assistant pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, delivered a reflection of his “I Have a Dream,” speech, Grimes said.

In that refection he expressed his own pessimism.

In that sermon, King said that in the 1963 march he and others had tried to talk to the nation about about many things including a dream he had, Grimes said.

King said it was not long afterward that he started seeing his dream turn into a nightmare, Grimes said.

Dr. King said the first time he saw that was when “four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama,” Grimes noted, quoting the sermon.

In that sermon Dr. King said the nightmare continued as he moved through the nation’s ghettos and saw his black brothers and sisters “perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes’ problem of poverty.”

The sermon continues, “I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, in the midst of their disappointment, turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem.”

Dr. King said that he saw the dream turn into a nightmare as the war in Vietnam escalated, Grimes said.

“Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can’t give up in life,” Grimes said quoting Dr. King’s sermon.

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.”

That message was entitled “Peace on Earth” and was Dr. King’s last Christmas message, Grimes said

Dr. King would have been 94 years of age Sunday had he lived, Grimes said.

Grimes said he even studied the Dr. King who was obsessed with the TV program “Star Trek.”

He was obsessed because in the future represented by the show poverty and illness had been solved and people loved each other regardless of color, Grimes said.

Dr. King enjoyed watching the program with his children, he stressed.

Dr. King even convinced Nichelle Nichols who portrayed Lt. Uhura from leaving the show, Grimes said. He told the actress that she was uplifting to people of color and that his daughters watched her, Grimes said.

Dr. King also told Nichols that his daughters looked up to her and that when his children saw her that they would ask if they could go into outer space one day, Grimes said.

“I say to my daughters that is why I am marching,” Grimes said, again quoting Dr. King. “He thought ‘Star Trek’ was the fulfillment of his dream.”

Grimes said he was so nervous about meeting Dr. King’s daughter, Yolanda King, that he wrote her a seven-page letter.

She told him she had to stop and use the dictionary 10 times, he said.

‘This is why my father marched, and this is why he died so that you and young people like you will have opportunities that your forefathers did not have,’” Grimes said she told him.

Grimes joked as he was closing his comments that he would close three times because he is a Baptist minister.

In his first closing he returned to his opening statement that peace is virtually unpayable.

In his second closing, Grimes spoke about how people had paved the way for him.

“You see, somebody has paid the cost for us,” he acknowledged. “So it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we do so for the next generation all that has been done for us.

“As I come down to my last closing, speaking of somebody who has paid the cost, I could not go back to my seat unless I gave all praise to the one who makes all things possible. About 2,000 years ago there was somebody who went ahead or all of us.”

Elder Javara Braggs, founder and coordinator of It’s Him for Me Ministries in Raleigh, was the moderator.

“We thank each and every one of you that were able to come and celebrate with us today as we celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Braggs said

She also thanked the Association for putting the program together.

Dr. Tanya Wynn, Association vice president and program chair, gave the welcome and recognized special guests.

“Remember where there is unity, there is peace,” she said. “That is our theme for this program.”

Mount Olive Mayor Kenny Talton brought the greetings from the town.

“I wish so many other people could participate in an event like this whether celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or celebrating Black History Month or celebrating the community right here in our town,” he said.

He asked the audience to participate with him by repeating comments made by Dr. King: “Darkness cannot drive out Darkness. Only light can do that.

“Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. Remember those words as I am going to remember them today and many days before and after today.”

Dr. King was one of the most influential figures in Civil Rights history, he said.

“Today, let us embrace the opportunity to learn from his example and live out his dream of a world where we can respect each others differences and live together in peace,” Talton said.

Music was by the church mass choir and Makita Jenkins, retired Grantham School principal, led the audience in signing “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The program closed with the audience singing “Reach Out and Touch Someone’s Hand.”

An offering was accepted for the Carver High School Alumni and Friends Association’s scholarship program. Bebra Robinson, financial secretary, and Deacon Lenston Whitfield, treasurer/regional vice president, presided.

Association President Carrie Kornegay introduced Grimes and gave words of thanks.

Scripture was read by Al Southerland, Association public relations officer, and Whitfield gave the prayer.