'Wake up. Get up. Speak up,' about injustice, pastor urges on MLK anniversary

YOUNGSTOWN

Forty-nine years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the keynote speaker at a local memorial observance exhorted the audience to keep the memory of the slain civil-rights leader alive by speaking out on social justice issues.

The Tuesday occasion was the annual memorial service for the iconic leader in the Mahoning County Courthouse rotunda, which was sponsored by the Baptist Pastors’ Council of Youngstown and Vicinity.

Dr. King was slain April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn.

“Wake up. Get up. Speak up,” the Rev. Gena Thornton of Youngstown, former pastor of Grace AME Church in Warren, urged the audience, which included many clergy and Youngstown and Mahoning County officials.

“When I heard the news that Dr. King had been shot, something touched me on this shoulder, and I heard a voice say: ‘Wake up,’” she recalled of that evening 49 years ago.

It’s necessary to continue to speak out today against injustice and prejudice that’s based on race and gender and “all of the things that separate humanity,” she added.

Read more about the event in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.