Aiming to honor the past while looking to the future, supporters of the 50th anniversary commemoration of Martin Luther King’s most famous speech turned to 8-year-old Zaqary Asuamah.
The Decatur third-grader offered his rendition, from memory, of much of King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech as part of a kick-off event for upcoming festivities honoring the 1963 March on Washington.
Standing before more than 100 people at the Carter Center - including former President Jimmy Carter, King’s daughter Bernice King and civil rights icon the Rev. C.T. Vivian - Zaqary confidently stepped upon the stage and said, “This is a speech that changed many people’s lives.”
His performance, which rose in intensity as he went along, fit perfectly into the theme of an evening that directed King’s message toward helping the future of young people and education. Called America’s Sunday Supper, the event begins a series of tributes that will include another march in Washington and the ceremonial ringing of bells across the nation to honor King’s hope of hearing freedom ring.
Bernice King said the adults of today have a duty to guide the young.
“It’s about preparing the way for another generation,” she said.
Pointing close to home, she said the poor graduation rate for Atlanta’s high schoolers was “like a 911, it’s like an emergency.”
Vivian, who last week was named a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, added, “It is really clear if you’re not educated, you don’t survive in this society.”
He said many young people who drop out end up in prison.
“You can’t be the richest country in the world, and have that level of dropouts, and do nothing about it,” he said.
The event – sponsored by the volunteer group Points of Light, Target and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change – promoted a vision of diverse groups sharing a meal to discuss issues.
Carter, for his part, recalled the importance of King’s message in his own life. He noted he grew up in a small south Georgia town that had 215 black people and 10 whites. “We were completely immersed in one another’s life,’’ he said.
It was King’s message, Carter stressed, that lifted the “millstone” that was racial segregation.
When he ran for president, Carter said, the support of the King family helped convince many black voters that he could be trusted. And when he was elected the nation’s highest office, he said he directed his administration with a vision of peace and human rights.
To Bernice King, he said, “That came directly from your father.”
Carter also recalled a conversation he had with Nelson Mandela. Carter said to Mandela that King was among the greatest people produced by Georgia and America.
Mandela responded that the list should include the world.
“I didn’t argue with him,” Carter recalled.
But the greatest response of the evening was reserved for Zaqary – a standing ovation, actually. Dressed in a little black suit and a big red bow tie, the boy said beforehand that he was not nervous. (But he also noted that he had practiced the speech “many, many times” that day.)
He began at the part of King’s speech that addresses the red hills of Georgia, where, he says, one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
When Zaqary reached the big ending, the audience joined with him as they all said, “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
Bernice King got up and said, “Wow.”
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