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Speaker at MLK memorial service encourages ‘meaningful change’
By LINDA M. LINONIS
YOUNGSTOWN
The Rev. Dr. Morris W. Lee challenged those attending a memorial service honoring the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to “live what we sing about and talk about.”
That is “to work to bring about meaningful change,” said the keynote speaker for the “From Selma to Significance” service Tuesday in the Mahoning County Courthouse rotunda.
The Baptist Pastors’ Council of Youngstown sponsored the event honoring the late Dr. King, an American Baptist minister, humanitarian and civil-rights leader, who was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn.
The Rev. Dr. Lee is pastor of Third Baptist Church, 1177 Park Hill Drive, the oldest black Baptist congregation in the Western Reserve, organized in 1874. He has served as pastor since 1960.
He said this event and others like it “pay tribute to King and those who continue to work for justice.”
Mr. Lee said he has “seen a lot of change” but also witnessed injustice. “I’ve seen dogs turned on people and billy clubs used on people,” he recalled about civil-rights marches and protests.
He noted he participated in the five-day, 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to campaign for voting rights. Dr. Lee recalled the “hot sun and heat of Alabama” and a Confederate flag flying over the Statehouse while the American flag was relegated to a secondary site.
“What a day that was ... people representing all walks of life were there,” Mr. Lee said, noting marchers were from a multitude of faith backgrounds and colors.
He said he thought the march showed what needs to take place in America — people of all races working cooperatively.
But, he said, he recognized that segregation and prejudice weren’t limited to the United States but were worldwide issues. “We here in Youngstown, Mississippi, have experienced it,” he said with a smile, then corrected the state to Ohio.
“I grew up sitting in the back of the bus and the front of the train,” Mr. Lee said of the least-desirable seats. He grew up in Portsmouth, Va.
Mr. Lee said when he traveled by train to Youngstown decades ago, he couldn’t get anything to eat along the way in the South. “But once we crossed the Mason-Dixon line into Pennsylvania, I could go to the dining car,” he said. “I thought I was in some kind of utopia.”
But, Mr. Lee said, though it was different in the North and Mahoning Valley, blacks didn’t go to certain schools, live in some neighborhoods and or apply for some jobs. While there has been progress, he said, citing Barack Obama as the first black president and local ground breakers, that progress must continue and the fight for equal rights is ongoing.
Mr. Lee said he is inspired by words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
“There are no greater words,” he said.
In an interview in 2013 for the 50th anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, Mr. Lee recalled meeting King in the 1950s. Mr. Lee attended Virginia Union University in Richmond, Va., where he received a master of divinity degree.
King, then pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., presented a seminar. Mr. Lee remembered King as a “gifted orator” and saw him as a teacher. Mr. Lee also said he realized “there was no one like him, and I followed him.”
Program participants were the Rev. Kenneth L. Simon, worship leader; Pastor Ernest Ellis, who led “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” dubbed the Negro national anthem by the NAACP; Pastor Nathaniel Dubose, welcome; Pastor Henry McNeil, statement of purpose; the Rev. Dr. Lewis Macklin, introduction of speaker; and Pastor Kevin Crum Sr., president of the Baptist Pastors’ Council, benediction. Sophia Brooks sang “Oh Freedom” and “Trying to Get Ready.”