32nd Annual State of Wisconsin King
Tribute & Ceremony:
For These Troubled Times
Tribute & Ceremony:
For These Troubled Times
By Jonathan Gramling
Part 1 of 2
As the origins of holidays begin to fade into the past, their remembrance can become superficial
and mechanical with the meaning and significance of the day giving way to ritual and sometimes
inaccurate portrayals of the people behind the event.
Professor Sherrilyn Ifill, who spoke at the Wisconsin King Holiday Tribute & Ceremony at the State
Capitol on January 15th, reminded the audience that Dr. King and the civil rights movement still
had relevance for the 21st century. It was a lesson not lost on the audience that frequently
interrupted her remarks with resounding applause.
After noting that Madison was the home for the late, nationally-renowned civil rights attorney Percy
Julian Jr., Ifill paid tribute to all of the people who made sacrifices during the civil rights movement.
“Today, we can remember, celebrate and acknowledge the enormous contribution of not only Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., but also the hundreds of men and women like King and Percy Julian Jr. and
those who have passed away this year like Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who devoted their lives to
fight for the civil rights of all Americans,” Ifill said. “I very often give talks on Martin Luther King
Part 1 of 2
As the origins of holidays begin to fade into the past, their remembrance can become superficial
and mechanical with the meaning and significance of the day giving way to ritual and sometimes
inaccurate portrayals of the people behind the event.
Professor Sherrilyn Ifill, who spoke at the Wisconsin King Holiday Tribute & Ceremony at the State
Capitol on January 15th, reminded the audience that Dr. King and the civil rights movement still
had relevance for the 21st century. It was a lesson not lost on the audience that frequently
interrupted her remarks with resounding applause.
After noting that Madison was the home for the late, nationally-renowned civil rights attorney Percy
Julian Jr., Ifill paid tribute to all of the people who made sacrifices during the civil rights movement.
“Today, we can remember, celebrate and acknowledge the enormous contribution of not only Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., but also the hundreds of men and women like King and Percy Julian Jr. and
those who have passed away this year like Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth who devoted their lives to
fight for the civil rights of all Americans,” Ifill said. “I very often give talks on Martin Luther King
Sherrilyn Ifill, the keynote speaker
at the State of Wisconsin King
Tribute and Ceremony,applied Dr.
King’s legacy to 21st century
issues.
at the State of Wisconsin King
Tribute and Ceremony,applied Dr.
King’s legacy to 21st century
issues.
Day and what is most extraordinary to me is how much more I learn about Dr. King every year. I have a collection of his speeches and
CDs and I am just astonished at the amazing journey of this man who is too often reduced to phrases and one very famous speech.”
Ifill admonished her audience to not let the King Holiday to become a time-distorted remembrance of days gone by.
“So many Americans are caught up in the grip of a kind of paralyzing nostalgia,” Ifill said. “Some spend their time reenacting battles.
Others paint a glossy picture of what life was like in the good old days. Even in my own church, there is often talk about how life was
much better when we had prayer in the schools. Some people remember what it was like when America stood tall in the world, when we
had standards and children respected their parents, when nobody pushed against the definition of marriage, when generations of the
family lived in the same home, when the church was central to the Black community, when we looked out for one another, when we didn’
t have scores of homeless people because families took care of their own and when baseball was America’s pastime. All of those
memories may be true and for some, sweet.”
The ‘Good Old Days’ were not necessarily good for all people.
“We have to be careful about nostalgia,” Ifill warned the crowd. “Sometimes our view in the rearview mirror is obscured. We have blind
spots. And so, we forget that these were also the days when too many bright young women could not dream that they could become
doctors or lawyers or corporate board chairs or fire chiefs like the woman who was honored today, when a young Black girl’s first job
was picking cotton in the fields with her family or helping her mother clean someone’s house. These were the days when most Black
children had very little opportunity to attend any school past the seventh grade. These were the days when prejudice against Jews and
the Irish and the Italians kept those groups marginalized and circumscribed in their own neighborhoods and in a narrow set of prescribed
jobs. These were the days when child abuse happened and was never spoken about, when a woman might have to endure years of
beating at the hands of her husband because what happened in the family stayed in the family or when having cancer wasn’t spoken
about publically so people suffered in silence and isolation, when America’s pastime excluded Blacks from playing the gap, when there
was no Head Start preschool, when a 10-year-old Percy Julian sat in a tree with his father every night for weeks after their home was
firebombed for being the first Black family to move into Oak Park, Illinois. And what people were praying for too often in the schools was
that Black children would not be allowed to attend.”
And so, Ifill warned those present to not be stuck in the past, making the King Holiday a hollow tribute, but to follow King’s example of
transformation.
“It is sometimes difficult to fully absorb the scope of Dr. King’s accomplishments in his 12 short years as a public civil rights leader, from
his leadership in the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott to his assassination in 1968 as he prepared to stand in solidarity with the striking
sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee,” Ifill said. “He refreshed himself over and over again, confronting new challenges,
expanding the boundaries of his thinking, reframing the parameters of his activism, quickly incorporating new information about the
conditions of his fellow man. I would venture that somewhere along the line he must have wanted to stop, maybe the 15th or 16th time he
was arrested or maybe after the 1967 Supreme Court decision that found that the city of Montgomery had violated the Constitution by
maintaining a segregated bus system. King could have declared victory, returned to Atlanta and lived the relatively comfortable life of a
middle class Black pastor. Instead he decided to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King was arrested and wrote The
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, perhaps the most important manifesto about the spiritual imperative of social justice ever written. King
could have regarded his work as complete. In fact, 1963 would have been a good year for King to decide that he had fought the good fight
for justice. In that same year, he gave his historic speech at the March on Washington and Time magazine selected him as Man of the
Year. But instead, he gathered himself for the next battle, fighting for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which could have been seen as the
crowning achievement of the movement. But in 1965 came the most volatile and perhaps the most important year of the civil rights
movement and among the most challenging for Dr. King. The voting rights marches in Selma, Alabama dramatized the violent response
of white Southerners to the desire of Blacks to exercise their right to vote. And the struggle in Selma resulted in what has been rightly
called the Crown Jewel of the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Many people say that King struggled to find his way after the Voting Rights Act passed. But ultimately he did what so few leaders today
do. He challenged himself to deal with the unfamiliar. He began to try to understand the face of more than discrimination and urban
segregation. He brought his fight for justice to a place where many said he should not go, to the issue of the Vietnam War. And he began
to focus on poverty as the next great civil rights battle.”
So while King lived and led the civil rights movement in the past, Ifill urged her audience to apply King’s message to contemporary
issues.
“I don’t think it is hard to imagine where Dr. King would have stood on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan once you’ve read his speech
Beyond Vietnam,” Ifill emphasized. “Dr. King’s decision to speak out against the Vietnam War was personally difficult. There were many
who countered against him addressing this issue. They argued that he should stay in his lane and only speak about civil rights and not
foreign policy. But Dr. King ultimately concluded that silence was betrayal. And in fact, at the end of that speech, Dr. King concluded that
war is the enemy of the poor because the resources used to amass war will be diverted from the critical, important needs of the poor of
this country.”
Next issue: Loan discrimination and more
CDs and I am just astonished at the amazing journey of this man who is too often reduced to phrases and one very famous speech.”
Ifill admonished her audience to not let the King Holiday to become a time-distorted remembrance of days gone by.
“So many Americans are caught up in the grip of a kind of paralyzing nostalgia,” Ifill said. “Some spend their time reenacting battles.
Others paint a glossy picture of what life was like in the good old days. Even in my own church, there is often talk about how life was
much better when we had prayer in the schools. Some people remember what it was like when America stood tall in the world, when we
had standards and children respected their parents, when nobody pushed against the definition of marriage, when generations of the
family lived in the same home, when the church was central to the Black community, when we looked out for one another, when we didn’
t have scores of homeless people because families took care of their own and when baseball was America’s pastime. All of those
memories may be true and for some, sweet.”
The ‘Good Old Days’ were not necessarily good for all people.
“We have to be careful about nostalgia,” Ifill warned the crowd. “Sometimes our view in the rearview mirror is obscured. We have blind
spots. And so, we forget that these were also the days when too many bright young women could not dream that they could become
doctors or lawyers or corporate board chairs or fire chiefs like the woman who was honored today, when a young Black girl’s first job
was picking cotton in the fields with her family or helping her mother clean someone’s house. These were the days when most Black
children had very little opportunity to attend any school past the seventh grade. These were the days when prejudice against Jews and
the Irish and the Italians kept those groups marginalized and circumscribed in their own neighborhoods and in a narrow set of prescribed
jobs. These were the days when child abuse happened and was never spoken about, when a woman might have to endure years of
beating at the hands of her husband because what happened in the family stayed in the family or when having cancer wasn’t spoken
about publically so people suffered in silence and isolation, when America’s pastime excluded Blacks from playing the gap, when there
was no Head Start preschool, when a 10-year-old Percy Julian sat in a tree with his father every night for weeks after their home was
firebombed for being the first Black family to move into Oak Park, Illinois. And what people were praying for too often in the schools was
that Black children would not be allowed to attend.”
And so, Ifill warned those present to not be stuck in the past, making the King Holiday a hollow tribute, but to follow King’s example of
transformation.
“It is sometimes difficult to fully absorb the scope of Dr. King’s accomplishments in his 12 short years as a public civil rights leader, from
his leadership in the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott to his assassination in 1968 as he prepared to stand in solidarity with the striking
sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee,” Ifill said. “He refreshed himself over and over again, confronting new challenges,
expanding the boundaries of his thinking, reframing the parameters of his activism, quickly incorporating new information about the
conditions of his fellow man. I would venture that somewhere along the line he must have wanted to stop, maybe the 15th or 16th time he
was arrested or maybe after the 1967 Supreme Court decision that found that the city of Montgomery had violated the Constitution by
maintaining a segregated bus system. King could have declared victory, returned to Atlanta and lived the relatively comfortable life of a
middle class Black pastor. Instead he decided to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King was arrested and wrote The
Letter from a Birmingham Jail, perhaps the most important manifesto about the spiritual imperative of social justice ever written. King
could have regarded his work as complete. In fact, 1963 would have been a good year for King to decide that he had fought the good fight
for justice. In that same year, he gave his historic speech at the March on Washington and Time magazine selected him as Man of the
Year. But instead, he gathered himself for the next battle, fighting for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which could have been seen as the
crowning achievement of the movement. But in 1965 came the most volatile and perhaps the most important year of the civil rights
movement and among the most challenging for Dr. King. The voting rights marches in Selma, Alabama dramatized the violent response
of white Southerners to the desire of Blacks to exercise their right to vote. And the struggle in Selma resulted in what has been rightly
called the Crown Jewel of the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Many people say that King struggled to find his way after the Voting Rights Act passed. But ultimately he did what so few leaders today
do. He challenged himself to deal with the unfamiliar. He began to try to understand the face of more than discrimination and urban
segregation. He brought his fight for justice to a place where many said he should not go, to the issue of the Vietnam War. And he began
to focus on poverty as the next great civil rights battle.”
So while King lived and led the civil rights movement in the past, Ifill urged her audience to apply King’s message to contemporary
issues.
“I don’t think it is hard to imagine where Dr. King would have stood on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan once you’ve read his speech
Beyond Vietnam,” Ifill emphasized. “Dr. King’s decision to speak out against the Vietnam War was personally difficult. There were many
who countered against him addressing this issue. They argued that he should stay in his lane and only speak about civil rights and not
foreign policy. But Dr. King ultimately concluded that silence was betrayal. And in fact, at the end of that speech, Dr. King concluded that
war is the enemy of the poor because the resources used to amass war will be diverted from the critical, important needs of the poor of
this country.”
Next issue: Loan discrimination and more
