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Seldom are we afforded an
opportunity to obtain an insider’s view of black struggle at
the intriguing five-points intersection of race, gender,
work, home and community. Overcoming persistent popular and
institutional stereotypes of black women, the organizers of
the 2016 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Celebration were
able to provide Toledo with a truly diverse ceremony that
actually aligned with King’s hard fought agenda.
The keynote address was
given by Pastor Cori Bush, an African-American woman,
mother, pastor and activist whose work is situated on the
frontlines of the justice battlefield in Ferguson, Missouri.
History often overlooks the lives of women of color who risk
their lives and work tirelessly to bring healing, health and
wholeness simultaneously in the home and community.
Pastor Bush, one of these
unsung black mother activists, agreed to also share her
story with the Truth’s readers.
Cori Bush:
Thank you everyone. Just sitting here and watching and
listening to everyone, this is an awesome, awesome event you
have. This is an awesome event, and maybe you don’t
understand it because you’re used to it, but I’m not used to
this. This is blowing my mind sitting here, and it’s
blowing my mind because the MLK Day celebrations that I’ve
gone to back home, the ones that my parents drug me out to,
I had the look that they drug me out. I sat there as a
youth and we sang the songs and I listened to the speakers
and I, “ugh, ugh, ugh.” Even now, the ones that we have in
St. Louis, actually the one we had last year and I think
today, the protesters protested it because it wasn’t enough
youth involvement, it wasn’t enough activist involvement.
We’re talking about the
new Civil Rights Movement and the people that were actually
feet on the ground were not even invited to the table, but
then I look around in this place and I see all of these
beautiful babies around the place, I see them moving and
working and doing, and even the ones that are in the stands,
they aren’t giving that face like mama made me come, so I
applaud you, Toledo. I applaud you.
First, I must thank my God
and my Father for this opportunity to send me here, to have
me here. It is an honor to stand before you today to
commemorate the legacy of the one, the great Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. I want to say thank you to Mayor Paula
Hicks-Hudson of the City of Toledo, to Sharon Gaber,
president of the University of Toledo, thank you all so
much, and also to Linda Alvarado, executive director of the
Board of Community Relations for inviting me to this
wonderful event. To the clergy, elected officials,
military, and to you, the residents of Toledo, thank you.
Now, as we were sitting
and were listening to the Justice or Else All-Stars, I was
looking out at some of the faces of the people, and not to
criticize anyone, but I was looking out to see some of the
reactions, because that holds me right there what they’re
saying. They’re saying say her name, say his name. In case
you didn’t know, that that’s a hash tag that we put when
somebody dies. Especially, it kicked off with Sandra Bland,
hash tag Sandra Bland, say her name. Say the name, say the
name, don’t let that pass you, say the name, and so I was
noticing that the looks on some people’s faces was “why do
they seem so angry?”
Well we should be angry
because the melanin in my skin says that I can’t live and I
don’t understand why. My melanin is beautiful. It won’t
scratch off, it won’t come off, I can’t change it or
nothing, but I could do it, if I could I wouldn’t because
it’s my beauty, it’s my soul, it’s everything that’s in me.
And I’m not saying the amount of melanin in my skin makes me
better than you, what I’m saying is the beauty that is you,
don’t knock the beauty that is me. Your beauty is yours, my
beauty is mine.
I guess I’ll go back to
the script now. So justice or else, is giving a voice to
the voiceless through storytelling. I absolutely love this
theme. It speaks of empowering everyday people to change
the world. As I walked up to this podium, or as people saw
the article, the article with me in it, the picture on the
back of the program, some placed me in a box in their minds
already. A black person, box. Oh, it’s a woman speaking,
box. She has braids, subcategory to the box. I doubt if
she’s middle class, subcategory. She’s a Ferguson
protestor, she’s violent, subcategory, and the list goes on
and on and on.
And as this list goes on,
the value on my voice for what I’m about to say for those
same people gets smaller and smaller. They start to care
less and less about what I have to say, my words become
invalid. Invalid, unimportant and irrelevant before I even
get started, so bear with my voice. All the while, while
you’re tuning me out, hash tag, hash tag, hash tag, new hash
tag. These labels that we allow our society to place upon
us desensitize us to being separate. It’s okay for us to be
separate. These new seeds of division are sewn in us each
and every day through the media and popular culture and we
accept it. The more labels we have the less justice we see,
and the less justice we seek, because everyone is consumed
by their own box. Dr. King spoke about not focusing on the
things that make us different, but the things that make us
the same.
So yesterday I arrived
here in Toledo. A group of us had a dinner at a local
restaurant. A young lady there approached me and asked, “So
did all of that stuff really happen in Ferguson? Because
you know, I was reading something, I saw something about it
just yesterday.” And I answered, “Yes, it did, and actually
it was worse than what you saw or what you just read.”
Who reaches this baby
about our world? Who tells her that ignorance doesn’t stop?
Just because you’re not paying attention, it doesn’t stop
little black boys and black girls, black women, black men,
brown women and brown men from being killed unjustly, just
because we’re ignorant to it.
That person was me for a
while. I was her. I was fed that story from my elders. Go
to school, get good grades, get into a good college, get
your degree, get a good job, get a husband, have some kids
after you travel the world and see some things and live a
good life. Yeah, I drank the Kool-Aid, but no one ever told
me that walking, driving, thinking, blinking, anything while
black could get me killed.
Growing up as a
politician’s kid with the police always around, I believed
that if the police hurt you it was because you did something
wrong. It was because you were wrong. You had to do
something wrong because you know, we free now. The Civil
Rights Movement is over with, it’s done. Jim Crow over
with. At about the age of 14, I started to notice something
wasn’t right, that something wasn’t adding up, so Bishop
Desmond Tutu said if you are neutral in situations of
injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. The
apathy and complacency that we allow in our communities are
on the side of the oppressor. Are we teaching our young
people the truth? Are we giving them the platform to speak
their experiences? And then if we give them the platform do
we validate their voices?
This is what happened in
Ferguson when Mike Brown, Jr. was killed by former Ferguson
police officer Darren Wilson. As this 18-year-old baby’s
body lay in the street in Ferguson for 4-1/2 hours
uncovered, blood laying in the street, it was about 105
degrees with a heat index of somewhere around 103, 107,
somewhere in there, hot. So this was okay. It was okay and
we were supposed to just allow it. It was supposed to be
normal for us. It was supposed to be okay. We were
supposed to say, “Oh, he must’ve done something wrong to
deserve to lay in the street for 4-1/2 hours like a dog out
waiting for somebody to come and scoop him up.
So we felt voiceless
because we could only stand there. We couldn’t cross the
line. We felt voiceless, so we didn’t know what to do to be
heard. There was no script, there was no instruction book
for us. Remember, we’re everyday people. We didn’t have
anything that was set before us that says this is what you
should do if this should ever happen. All the boycotts and
all the marches that we did, MLK Day and other different
things, we actually, it wasn’t, we weren’t coming up against
anything, it was all in observance of or to commemorate, so
when it hit the fan we didn’t know what to do but hit the
streets, use our voices.
We were everyday people
who just wanted to see justice. So we questioned, we
shouted, we cried, we sang, we prayed, we yelled, we
partied. Oh, we partied, it was called demonstration. We
helped, we comforted, we marched, we boycotted. They
yelled, they threatened, they bullied, they beat, they
stomped, they arrested, they hogtied and teargassed. We
were armed with signs written in marker. They were armed
with assault rifles, riding gear, tanks, dogs, chemical
weapons, drones, helicopters, special surveillance units,
etc., etc. We lived this all day, every day, day after day,
night after night. We protested 24 hours a day, day after
day, week after week, month after month. We protested for
more than 400 days.
(to be continued)
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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