MLK Day Remembered

We linked arms, black and white and brown and sang “We Shall Overcome,” as many stanzas as we could remember. It was Martin Luther King Day, and about 100 of us crowded into a modest white stucco church that would look more at home in Santa Fe than Elizabeth, New Jersey. Hope splashed through our veins like kids in a waterpark.

We were like-minded people, at least we liked to think so. Single moms from Pioneer Homes had their kids in tow, the babies cuddled on their laps and older kids who would be nudged when they slouched on the folding chairs. There were well-heeled suburban volunteers who every Tuesday would set place settings for guests dished up Beulah’s prized turkey soup. And bright-eyed volunteers who lived with my then rector husband and me in a rambling church rectory next door.

Even though this took place over thirty years ago, some in the crowd still stand out. There was Irene, a graceful older woman jubilant that her son wrongly imprisoned for rape would soon be freed, thanks to a DNA test that established his innocence. And Oswaldo, a Cuban refugee who served as our soup kitchen bouncer, found camping on our porch with all his possessions- among them a busted stereo speaker. And Bob, who resided in a car parked on Elizabeth Avenue when he was not in the Alexian Brothers’ emergency room.

For one grace-filled moment, we transcended our pigeonholes, celebrating a man for whom justice was always bending like an arc toward the empty lots and boarded up homes of Elizabeth, New Jersey.