Decades after his passing, the example of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s extraordinary leadership is taught in schools, admired by people around the world and will be immortalized in granite along Washington’s National Mall later this month.
But King did not start out as the august, awe-inspiring figure depicted in the statue that dominates his memorial. He, like countless other unsung idealists, began as a young, untested, even reluctant leader.
Building a monument is one kind of tribute, and an important one. Another — harder to see but no less consequential — is to walk the same walk, to live according to the same lights.
All around us, local leaders are striving to do that. Many are young and inexperienced, as King was in 1955 when he was thrust to the forefront of the Montgomery bus boycott. But each, in his or her own way, is dedicated to realizing the ideals King lived and died for.
Emeka Ezeoke
31, medical student and founder of Selfless 4 Africa
King’s models and his vision were global. So are Emeka Ezeoke’s.
For most people, going to medical school consumes every shred of time and energy. But Ezeoke, a third-year medical student at the Medical College of Georgia, somehow finds time to raise money to give other students in Africa the opportunities he has had.
Ezeoke, who moved to the U.S. from Nigeria in 2001, is one founder of Selfless 4 Africa, created by a group of African immigrants to provide scholarships for high school students and fund other charitable projects on their home continent.
He was spurred to social action while attending Georgia Tech partly by seeing the numbers of homeless and poor people on the streets of downtown Atlanta. Working as a volunteer in South American orphanages prompted his decision to become an emergency room physician with the goal of participating in humanitarian health missions in poor countries.
Last year, Selfless 4 Africa raised enough money to fund the last three years of high school for about 20 students. Ezeoke’s ultimate goal for the organization is to provide a free education for all African students from high school to the university level.
“Dr. King believed in social equality for everybody whether rich, poor, black or white,” he said. “That is exactly what we’re trying to do in our organization: help people who cannot provide for themselves and to have a better life for their families.”
Gina Perez
22, student and immigration reform advocate
To hear Gina Perez tell it, she’s an unlikely leader. “I am so shy,” she says. “I hate talking in front of people. But it was just time for me to do something.”
That something is speaking out for illegal immigrant students like herself. This spring she helped start the Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance and made headlines by taking part in a sit-in in downtown Atlanta promoting the DREAM Act. That bill would clear the way to citizenship for illegal immigrants who complete college or military service.
Many Georgians see people such as Perez as lawbreakers. She sees herself as part of the civil rights tradition King embodied. “If you changed just a few words from Dr. King’s speeches and letters from back then, it would be today, with just a different target,” she said.
Perez, who was brought to the United States by her mother at age 2, graduated from Lassiter High School with honors and was accepted to Georgia State and Kennesaw State universities. She hasn’t attended because she can’t afford the tuition.
“In high school I felt so alone, I felt that I was the only undocumented student in the state of Georgia,” she said. “I wanted other high school students to see people like me. I wanted them to them to know that there are people out there fighting for them.”
Rabbi Peter Berg
40, senior rabbi, The Temple in Atlanta
Atlanta’s iconic Jewish congregation has a long history of involvement in civil rights and social justice — former Rabbi Jacob Rothschild held one of the first integrated dinners with King in Atlanta in 1964. So the congregation wanted a religious leader who could uphold the tradition and continue the work.
In Peter Berg, The Temple got a leader who has worked on issues ranging from the death penalty to welfare reform to environmental protection in places as far flung as Washington, Dallas, New York and Virginia.
In his four years with the congregation, which numbers about 1,500 families, Berg has partnered with Morehouse College and the Israeli consulate to sponsor the Rabin-King Initiative. The project, named in honor of King and slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, is designed to enhance and celebrate the tradition of humanitarian struggle shared by African-Americans and Jews.
The program includes an exchange program with the University of Haifa in Israel, collaborative service projects with Jewish and African-American students, an oral history project and an endowed fellowship.
Berg also holds a yearly Shabbat service with Ebenezer Baptist Church, honoring King’s legacy, and is working with the Presbyterian Church on improving interfaith dialogue.
“I see it as an essential part of my rabbinic work to speak truth to power and to speak out when there is a time and place to do so,” Berg said. “I believe that my predecessors and King, in a constructive and positive way, stood up when it was time to stand up.”
Phillip Banks
25, entrepreneur and youth violence prevention advocate
One shot changed Phillip Banks’ life forever.
The former class clown at DeKalb’s Redan High School was already spreading the message of good behavior and education among metro Atlanta students as part of his Worlds Finest Entertainment party-hosting businesses. But when one of his 18-year-old protégés was killed at a house party last summer, Banks ratcheted up his outreach to a new level.
Working with the Metro Atlanta Violence Prevention Partnership, Banks — a frenetic bundle of energy in perpetual motion — helped develop and implement a sort of non-violence code for area youth. With his team of “Peacebuilders,” local youth advocating for peace, Banks, or “Twank” as he is commonly known, has taken the message into a number of high schools in the Atlanta area.
He has organized candlelight vigils with high school students, hosted nonviolence panels and offers student internships through his company — which he operates in addition to his day job as a marketer for a clothing retailer.
Banks has a natural camaraderie with the kids he works with; he struggled himself when he was younger, getting his diploma belatedly. But he says he always knew right from wrong — it was drilled into him by his mother.
“I can’t put my work alongside Dr. King, but I would love to get to that level,” Banks said. “Some of the things we do, like community empowerment, are similar to what he did, and I’m proud of that.”
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