Love March At 50: Has Dream Come True?

Young marchers saw a dream come true. Older marchers saw a dream turned nightmare.

Those differing perspectives on the successes of the Civil Rights Movement and on the persistence of racism, warmongering, and economic inequality permeated this year’s celebration of the city’s longest-running Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial birthday parade and church service.

Over 100 local elementary school students, civil servants, and Baptist parishioners filled the streets of East Rock and Goatville Wednesday to participate in the event, the 50th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Love March, as hosted by the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church and its pastor, Rev. Kennedy Hampton, Sr.

The late Martin Luther King Jr. was born Jan. 15, 1929.

Under a clear blue sky with police cruisers leading the way and blocking off intersections, Love March participants sang civil rights anthems and waved peace signs high as they wove from the the church’s steps at 100 Lawrence St. west to Whitney Avenue, south to Humphrey Street, east to State Street, and back north to Lawrence.

Back inside the church, attendees filled Shiloh’s pews for an hour-and-a-half service featuring a keynote address by the late Martin Luther King, Jr. himself — in the form of a 43-minute YouTube video recording of the Civil Rights icon delivering his 1967 ​“Three Evils” speech in Chicago.

“It Came True”

Throughout the march and the service, newcomers and veterans alike celebrated the endurance of the Love March and the positive legacy of King — and then articulated contrasting opinions of what the march, King, and the Civil Rights Movement mean a half century later.

“He gave us freedom and worked to make things right,” 10-year-old Barnard Environmental Magnet School fifth-grader Jayden Munoz (pictured at left) said about King.

“He put every color together so that we could all go to the same school, drink from the same fountains, go to the same bathrooms,” added 10-year-old Montowese Elementary School fifth-grader Marcus Wear (pictured).

“He had a dream, and it came true,” said 13-year-old Barnard eighth-grader Djovany Antoine (pictured), who held aloft the American flag as marched at the head of the parade. ​“So that there’s no more segregation. No more sitting on the back of the bus.”

Wanda Faison (pictured at right in photo), who marched towards the front of the parade alongside Wear, singled out this year’s participation of nearly 60 Barnard School third grade through eighth grade students as a highlight of her many decades participating in the Love March.

“It feels good to see the kids help,” she said.

Back at the church, after dozens of Barnard students (pictured) led the church in singalongs to ​“We Shall Overcome” and ​“This Little Light of Mine,” former New Haven State Rep. Bill Dyson commended the congregation and the adult participants in the march for providing the young people an opportunity to grow into future civil rights activists.

“Just think of the impact that this event has on them today,” said Dyson (pictured). ​“They’re getting a lesson, and you provided it. You provided it by your presence.”

“Dream Has Become A Nightmare”

While the kids in the march and at the service celebrated a ​“dream come true,” many of the adults who participated tempered that enthusiasm with both weariness and outrage that the injustices that motivated the Civil Rights Movement persist today.

Vanessa Mike (pictured) walked in the march holding a poster commemorating the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who was choked to death by New York City police in 2014.

“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” read the poster, repeating Garner’s dying words, which would become a refrain of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“That was wrong the way the cops did him,” Mike said. ​“There’s been so much brutality by the police.”

“If we don’t keep marching, no one will,” said Frank Thompson (pictured), a local truck driver who has participated in the Love March for decades.

At the church service, Mayor Justin Elicker (pictured) sounded a similarly cautionary note when he said, ​“We have in our nation a lot of hate right now.”

Marches like this provide a shining example of the love and communal action needed to overcome such hate, he said. ​“What brings us together is love.”

As he teed up King’s recorded keynote address, Hampton (pictured) warned the attendees not to fall prey to the myth that the racial and economic equality King and fellow 1960s activists fought for has been achieved.

“This is a moment to rejoice, but also a moment to be fearful at the same time,” he said.

Listen to this address that King gave in 1967, he urged the men, women and children sitting in Shiloh’s church pews. Understand that these words were spoken 53 years ago.

“I think the dream has become a nightmare,” he said.

Attendees then shut their eyes and listened as King’s voice came booming over the church’s speakers.

The eponymous ​“three evils” cited in the speech were those of racism, materialism, and militarism.

“We have come because we see this as a dark hour in the affairs of man,” King said those years ago.

Unemployment rages in African-American communities. Congress responds with an ​“anti-riot bill rather than a serious poverty program.”

State and federal legislators pass tax breaks for the rich, and cut social service benefits for the poor.

Political leaders drive the country to war after war, while desires for greater efficiency and productivity only lead to endless work.

“Racism,” King said, as attendees murmured in assent, ​“can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization.”

“If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism,” he continued, ​“some future historian will have to say, that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.”

Click on the Facebook Live videos below to watch excerpts from the march.