A celebration of the life and work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on Monday included songs, reflections and firsthand stories of activist efforts to seek justice for Black Americans.
A thematic thread connected the remarks of several speakers: King’s work remains unfinished.
Keynote speaker Fredrika Newton, president and co-founder of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, recalled her years of work as a member of the Black Panther Party, the Black-empowerment organization co-founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966.
“The work of serving the community and trying to improve the conditions of the community for Black and poor people was extremely hard. I cannot overstate the magnitude of what the Black Panther Party was trying to do,” Newton said, “and how much the government did not want them to do it. Our survival programs were helping our communities survive and simultaneously putting a target on our backs.”
Newton began volunteering with the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, as a college student, and years later married the organization’s co-founder. She became a widow in 1989 when a man shot Huey P. Newton.
Monday’s program on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus included a performance of the African American spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” by a quintet of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra members and IN UNISON Chorus member Alayna Epps.
A young Martin Luther King Jr. was inspired by Marian Anderson’s 1939 performance of the song on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let the Black opera singer perform at Constitution Hall.
“It was a symbol of dignity and resistance, a statement that artistry, humanity and justice cannot be confined by the walls of bigotry,” said Myron Burr, program manager for strategic initiatives at UMSL. The university produced Monday’s event.
In her remarks, Newton highlighted 65 programs the Black Panther Party offered before ending operations in 1982, including free breakfasts for schoolchildren, medical clinics, legal aid, child care and free clothes and shoes for the needy. The group described efforts like these as “survival programs.”
Long-running efforts by the FBI to discredit the Black Panthers helped create an incomplete impression of the organization among white Americans, Newton said.
“You always see pictures of Black men looking angry with guns,” she said. “The party was made up of young, Black men and women who donned aprons and hairnets to make and serve breakfast every morning. They wore lab coats in the health clinics to provide free sickle cell anemia testing. They stood in classrooms and day care facilities with books and toys in hand.”
Newton said there’s been a resurgence of recognition for the Black Panthers in Oakland over the past 20 years. The street on which Huey P. Newton died was named after him in 2021, and the Black Panther Party Museum opened in Oakland last year.
“I was grateful to learn today the true things that the Black Panther Party did. I learned a whole lot of new things,” attendee Chaunon Warren said after the event closed with an up-tempo arrangement of “We Shall Overcome” by the Sheldon’s All-Star Chorus and UMSL Voices of Jubilation, under the direction of Maria A. Ellis.
“I’m excited to go to the museum,” Warren added. “That’s my new thing. That’s the vacation this year.”
