Honoring Dr. King

DOVER — Martin Luther King Jr. is perhaps best known for his “I Have a Dream” speech calling for an end to racism in America.

Maggie Fogarty hopes people considering King’s life and legacy this week will dig deeper than those words alone.

“One of the things I have learned … is how important it is to see the whole man when we are looking at Martin Luther King,” Fogarty told roughly 200 people gathered Sunday at an event commemorating King at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital.

Seeing the whole man, Fogarty continued, requires us to “resist a simplistic, easy going and often whitewashed telling of his story.”

Fogarty, a Dover resident and co-director of the American Friends Service Committee of New Hampshire, gave the keynote address at Sunday’s commemoration hosted by the Dover Area Religious Leaders Association.

The event, held annually for more than 30 years, opened with a performance by the Dover High School concert choir of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” a song sung by civil rights activists and marchers. The choir, led by Jim Butka, ended the event with a rendition of “Baba Yetu,” which translates to “our father” in Swahili.

Between those choral performances, local faith leaders shined a spotlight on civil rights era injustices that King, and so many others fought to end. But they also focused on what they consider modern-day injustices that include homelessness and the plight of refugees and immigrants.

Julien Olivier of Barrington, chaplain at Wentworth-Douglass, recalled the unprecedented scope of the worldwide refugee crisis, noting that in 2018 nearly 71 million people were forcibly displaced. More than a third, he said, were younger than 18.

He was followed by Aaron Fowlkes of the Baha’i Community of Eliot, Maine, Rev. Sandra Pontoh of Maranatha Indonesian UCC Church of Madbury, and Rev. Sue Frost of the St. John’s United Methodist Church in Dover. Fowlkes read quotes from King, while Pontoh recalled words by Rosa Parks. Frost read from literary and political leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes.

Fogarty’s keynote address touched upon lesser known parts King’s life after his iconic 1963 “Dream” speech in Washington. She recalled his fight for economic justice with the Poor People’s Campaign, his fights against militarism and the Vietnam War and his support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis.

The latter effort brought King back to Memphis in April 1968, where he was assassinated on April 4 standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

The stands King took for economic equality and against militarism threatened much of the goodwill he earned through prior the civil rights efforts. King and his supporters believed poverty and discrimination themselves were a form of violence, a point Coretta Scott King made forcefully in the weeks after King’s death.

“These forms of violence exist today,” Fogarty said. “By many measures, the conditions that Coretta and Martin … responded to are worse today. And we face dueling existential threats, so the times are as urgent as they have ever been, but we seek to respond nonviolently and collectively.”

Those forms of violence, Fogarty said, include homelessness, the rising cost of housing and health care, child care and many other urgent challenges. She urged those in the audience to face these challenges and work collectively toward systemic change.

Fogarty’s words resonated with many attending the event. Anthony McManus, a retired attorney and former Dover city councilor, considered the message powerful. “We need to listen to it and do something about it,” he said afterward.

Mark Ferrin recently moved to Farmington from Keene, where he attended events over the years commemorating King. This was his first such event in Dover, but probably not the last.

“It gave me great hope,” he said, “to see a diversity of ages and a diversity of faith and a diversity of backgrounds come together to share and celebrate.”