ATLANTA: As Americans celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leaders and activists are trying to reconcile the transition from the nation’s first black president to a president-elect still struggling to connect with most nonwhite voters.
In more than one venue Monday, speakers and attendees expressed reservations about President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration, some even raising the specter of the Ku Klux Klan.
“When men no better than Klansmen dressed in suits are being sworn in to office, we cannot be silent,” Opal Tometi, a Black Lives Matter co-founder, told a crowd in Brooklyn, N.Y.
King’s daughter offered a less direct message, encouraging 2,000 people at her father’s Atlanta church to work for his vision of love and justice “no matter who is in the White House.”
Bernice King, speaking at Ebenezer Baptist, avoided a detailed critique of Trump, but said the nation has a choice between “chaos and community,” a dichotomy her father preached about. “At the end of the day, the Donald Trumps come and go,” she said, later adding, “We still have to find a way to create ... the beloved community.”
The current Ebenezer pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, did not call Trump by name, but praised his predecessor. “Thank you, Barack Obama,” he said. “I’m sad to see you go.”
In South Carolina, speakers at a state Capitol rally said minority voting power has never been more important and some attendees expressed unease about Trump joining forces with Republican congressional majorities.
“It’s going to be different, that’s for sure,” said Diamond Moore, a Benedict College senior who came to the Capitol. “I’m going to give Trump a chance. But I’m also ready to march.”
Trump did not participate publicly in any Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama took part in a service project at a shelter in Washington.
Back in Atlanta, Sen. Bernie Sanders brought the Ebenezer assembly to its feet with his reminder that King was not just an advocate for racial equality, but a radical proponent for economic justice — a mission that put him at odds with the political establishment.
“If you think governors and senators and mayors were standing up and saying what a great man Dr. King was, read history, because you are sorely mistaken,” roared Sanders, who invoked the same themes from his failed presidential campaign.
Activist priest Michael Pfleger, himself a self-described radical, built on Sanders’ message with a 45-minute keynote speech indicting the nation’s social and economic order, which he said would get worse under Trump.
The Chicago priest said “white hoods” of the Klan “have been replaced by three-piece suits.” He bemoaned high incarceration rates, a “militarized, stop-and-frisk police state,” profligate spending on war and a substandard education system.
Speaking at the King Center in Atlanta, Ohio’s governor said Americans shouldn’t focus so much on the highest-level people when there are ways to tackle many societal problems at the local and individual levels.
GOP Gov. John Kasich said King got the attention of people in power through a “bottom-up” approach worth emulating.
Elsewhere, residents in Memphis, Tenn., honored King with neighborhood cleanups and a daylong celebration at the National Civil Rights Museum.