To continue with the theme from the last post of moving ahead I put together a small essay from Monday’s MLK Day parade here in Baltimore. It was my first MLK Day parade and my first parade in Baltimore.  It was evident the hope  and dreams of Martin Luther King are alive and strong.  The sense of hope the election of Obama has brought to people is something I have not seen in my life time and its something I have wanted to experience since I first saw the powerful images of strength and determination from the civil rights movement.  Community empowerment is a force to be reckoned with.  This era in our nation is a new civil movement for fostering not just community action, but self-reliance and responsibility.  I have always believed we are faced with the tug of war between personal responsibility, performing to what others expect of us and the social realities we are faced with.  Our new President has high expectations of himself, of our commitment and is attempting to deal with the intricate web of social conditions present in our cities.  

In 2004 I finished a life changing college course with the Vice Provost of my university, Wanda Everage.  The class was titled, “The African American Experience”.  It was an honest approach to racial politics in our country and it challenged everything I had grown to know about race in America.  There is not a week that goes by that I do not think of Wanda and what I learned.  My experience continually shapes the content of my personal projects and daily choices. Through out the year we became very close. Later I became her TA and she not only became a mentor, but a dear friend. At the culmination of the course, she gave me a card and it said the below quote.  I want to extend this quote to everyone, especially those with the ability to move and change the way we think. 

“I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another.  I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power.  I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men (and women). I leave you finally, a responsibility to our young people.”  - Wanda Everage