Fifty-nine years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in the William Pitt Union about his hopes for economic equality for African Americans and concerns about the Vietnam War. On Monday, Pittsburghers celebrated King’s local legacy.
As people celebrate MLK Day through acts of service, remembrance of the civil rights movement and an examination of present-day civil rights, advocates and Pitt students spoke about the city’s rich civil rights history and its long-lasting impacts.
King had a powerful influence on the city of Pittsburgh, and his advocacy lingers in the minds of Pittsburghian civil rights activists today, including Wali Jamal, a 63-year-old Pittsburgh actor and playwright.
Jamal wrote multiple plays highlighting civil rights heroes, including one about Robert Smalls, an enslaved man who surrendered a Confederate ship to the Union Army. In 1863, to defend the city of Pittsburgh from Confederate attack, two forts were built. One was built by free Black men — Fort Smalls, a destination which Jamal visited frequently in his childhood.
“That fort, where it once stood, is a recreational playground called The Fort, and this playground is where I used to go swimming as a kid,” Jamal said. “History is under our feet as we speak.”
Michele Ellison, a businesswoman and social worker who has lived in Pittsburgh for 24 years, walked her first picket line and helped her dad register voters when she was nine. In ninth grade, Ellison was the youth representative on the advisory council of her mother’s Martin Luther King Jr. Community Health Center, which was located in the basement of a Lutheran Church. Ellison emphasized the significance of faith in civil rights struggles.
“They had an anchor, and their anchor was their faith,” Ellison said. “That provided and still provides the impetus for doing things when your energy is long past spent. It gives you that extra energy, like plugging into a power source.”
Ellison said she looks up to King for his tactics of making change through nonviolence.
“I figured there were many ways to be an activist — not just marching in the street,” Ellison said. “You can be an activist through your profession and through your work.”
From 1985 to 2005, Ronald Saunders of Penn Hills used his work as chairman on the Board of the National Black Political Caucus to help restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, lobby Pennsylvania congressmen for bi-district elections and lead the effort to appoint William Moore as Pittsburgh’s first Black police chief.
Saunders also served in the U.S. Army from 1967 to 1969 and recalled his work distributing leaflets for African Americans to protest the Vietnam War draft. Saunders said his favorite King speech is “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” which was given exactly one year before he was assassinated.
“He said when a country can spend more money stationing troops in Vietnam and you cannot protect the citizens of Selma, Alabama, you’re on the road to moral catastrophe,” Saunders said. “He spoke truths to power.”
Saunders said he sees the political and social issues of today to be similar to the political and social issues of the past, only that now, they’re more “deeply embedded.”
“You have fundamental challenges about how this country even operates as a democracy,” Saunders said. “We see how the Supreme Court, with the swipe of the pen, said ‘to hell’ with affirmative action. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been basically watered down to nothing. Trying to win a civil rights case through the federal courts is like trying to go up Mount Everest backwards.”
Despite this, Saunders said he believes in change and hopes that young people will be inspired by movements that promote positivity rather than hate.
“The American population needs to get hooked on trying to learn excellence — excellence personified in everything we do,” Saunders said. “That’s what Dr. King was about.”
On Jan. 20, PittServes hosted an MLK Day of Service to honor King’s belief that “everyone has a role to play” in acts of civil service for the community. Simon Wang, a senior economics and psychology major who attended, said he has come to the event in the past few years to honor his community.
“It’s really important for us to go out and show up and be there for [the community], as well as to be a good neighbor,” Wang said.
Julianna Werner, a senior marketing and supply chain major, said she has been working in partnership with PittServes since she was a sophomore and sees service learning as a fitting way to honor King.
“It’s teaching that engagement piece where it’s nice to talk to new people, talk to different people, and get different perspectives,” Werner said. “I think that’s something that he did so well, was to talk to people and listen.”