Rediscovering hope at annual MLK dinner

Jan. 17—In keeping with the central role that civic oratory played in establishing Martin Luther King Jr.'s lasting legacy, the community celebration held Monday at Allegheny College to honor King's birthday featured remarks, comments and longer addresses from more than a dozen speakers, nearly all of them prominent local figures.

But one of the more rousing speeches during an evening dedicated to the theme of "rediscovering hope" came from a speaker whose name was largely unfamiliar to the audience of more than 150 people who attended the annual event. In a sign that King's influence continues to grow more than 55 years after his death, it also came from the youngest of the evening's speakers.

Arlan-Rayn Jordan, an eighth grader at Meadville Area Middle School (MAMS), described to the audience her attempt to come to terms with the notion of reviving hope. The journey took her first to the dictionary, then to an assortment of internet rabbit holes that led her off course, before she returned to King's life for guidance and focused on one of his better known maxims: "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."

Reflecting on King's words opened her own mind, Arlan-Rayn told the audience.

"Nothing about hope is set in stone but a continuous path of optimism and positivity," she continued. "Today I have come to you with no definite answer on how to revive hope, but I have found comfort by living in infinite hope.

"Hope is how I first visualized my path and at the end of this journey I will have a map of infinite hope," Arlan-Rayn concluded. "Hope will remain because we are not lost."

If Monday's celebration was emblematic, it will be a map that runs through Meadville.

MAMS was not the only school represented on the event's dais. Nicolas Williams, a senior at Meadville Area Senior High, followed Arlan-Rayn in addressing the audience and similarly looked to King's life for the lessons it could provide.

"As we stand here today, decades after MLK's compassionate pleas for justice and equality we find ourselves at a crossroads," Williams said. "The challenges we face may be different but the essence of struggle remains. It is in this context that we rediscover hope, drawing inspiration from the unwavering resolve of a man who believed that despite the darkness, light could prevail."

The event, a fundraiser for the Meadville Martin Luther King Scholarship Fund Inc., continued a nearly 40-year tradition of birthday banquets honoring King. Hosted for many years at the Family & Community Christian Association (previously the YWCA) and more recently at St. Brigid Roman Catholic Church Social Hall, the celebration moved to Allegheny College last year after a two-year pandemic pause. The association and Crawford Central School District also partnered in organizing this year's dinner.

The series of speakers, which once again included Meadville's Marvin Burnett reciting King's "I Have a Dream" speech from memory, culminated with a personal address from Dominique Turner, Allegheny's associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion, and a fiery exhortation from the Rev. Jason Whitaker, pastor of Emmanuel Temple Church of God in Buffalo, New York, where he is also executive director of the city's Commission on Citizens' Rights.

Turner looked to King's most famous speech in drawing lessons. As King stood between the Lincoln Memorial and approximately 250,000 spectators in August 1963 delivering that speech — before it was popularly known as the "I Have a Dream" speech — King was struggling to live up to the weight of expectations upon him, Turner said. In fact, he added, King "was tanking."

At that point, as recordings of the speech demonstrate, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson urged King to "tell them about the dream," and the speech changed directions.

"You have to find people who you can trust your dreams with," Turner said, enumerating what he called the responsibilities that come with hope. "It's important to have people in your corner who can hold you accountable. ... We are obligated to listen to the people we trust."

Whitaker drew on his experiences in Buffalo, where less than two years ago a mass shooting in a Tops supermarket resulted in the deaths of 10 Black people. Whitaker had visited the store days before the shootings, he said, and knew six of the 10 people who died.

"There is still so much that happens to discourage or battle our hope and causes us to feel that we're losing," Whitaker told the crowd in a sermon-like address that drew a lesson on rediscovering hope from the biblical story of the prodigal son in building to a passionate crescendo.

"Please know as long as you've got breath in your lungs, there's still time to fulfill your God-given purpose," Whitaker insisted. "Now is the time for you to recognize and come to yourself."

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.