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Saturday, January 17, 2009
As I honor Obama, King, I’ll miss queen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s hard to imagine how elated Robbie Susan Moore would be about the historical significance of the coming days.
On Monday, the nation observes the 2009 Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. A day later, President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony plays to a worldwide stage. Gwinnett, like Atlanta and surrounding municipalities, will host numerous events to honor the slain civil rights leader. If she were alive, Moore would have been in the thick of the action in Gwinnett, where she lived. Actually, she would have been running things — the holiday parade that winds from the courthouse to Central Gwinnett High; the program that succeeds the march will take place there.
If it weren’t for Moore, there might not be a Gwinnett King Day observance. As president of the United Ebony Society of Gwinnett County Inc., organizing events surrounding the holiday was her baby, her mission, though she got by with a little help from friends.
If it weren’t for Moore, there would still be municipalities in Gwinnett that open City Hall on this national holiday. She, methodically and gracefully, led the holdout towns of Duluth, Norcross, Lawrenceville, Snellville, Grayson and Lilburn into the 21st century. She did so free of bitterness, resentment, threats.
And for the first time in 2007, all 14 city governments in Gwinnett were closed to recognize the slain leader. That was no small feat. Yet Moore, always diplomatic, said otherwise in a March 2008 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It’s been easy for me to do the things that I’ve done in Gwinnett,” she said. “That’s amazing, but it’s the truth.”
Lois Solomon, the Ebony Society’s secretary, provided context.
“She would get discouraged sometimes, but she didn’t have a spirit that stopped, regardless of the obstacles that got in her way,” she told me. “She had a lot of strong people around her, and in turn, she would be that encouraging factor. Robbie knew a lot of these politicians when they were wannabes, and she knew a lot of their parents, so that gave her an inside track. She had an insight with a lot of the movers and shakers, and she had a pleasing, non-threatening type of personality.”
I once had a reader e-mail me to say that he would never attend any event hosted by a group with ebony in the name. That in itself, he said, reeked of divisiveness, separation. Perhaps. Then again, he didn’t know Moore, a founding member of the 25-year-old group and its president until her death last year. She had love for everybody.
That’s why, if she were alive, my phone would have rung weeks ago. “We’re getting ready,” she’d say, and immediately I’d know what she meant: Gwinnett King Day Celebration 2009.
In recent years, Moore had begun truly emphasizing that folk of every hue and socioeconomic stripe were invited to partake in the county observance. One year, she e-mailed invitations to more than 50 predominantly white churches — twice.
“With her spirit — and truly she was a religious woman — she looked for justice and equality and believed that everybody is the same,” Solomon said. “That’s where her drive came from — her strong relationship with God and the beliefs that her parents instilled in her.”
Next week, when I take in events up close and watch them unfold on TV, I’ll think about Moore, and exult enough for the both of us.
