Long road to freedom

MONDAY, JAN. 19 — Freedom fighter Henry “Hank” Thomas lived through some of the most violent times in American history. As an original Freedom  Rider who rode buses in the South to test changes in civil rights laws, he’s been arrested 22 times. He survived a bus being burned by a mob while he and other passengers were on board.

“Today you and I live in a wonderful country,” Thomas said at today’s Martin Luther King Jr. holiday luncheon at the Lansing Center. But he said we all need “great resolve today.”

“All is not well in America,” he said. “Today after the civil rights movement some parts of our community is still in crisis.”

The evidence of that crisis ranges beyond race relations. Thomas pointed to the verdicts not to indict in the Ferguson, Mo., and New York cases of police killings. But he added there are other flashpoints in our national as well, including “immigration reform and more aggressive recruitment of the KKK.”

“The struggle continues,” he said.

Today’s 30th Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday luncheon was the largest with 1,200 in attendance, according to organizers.

Elena Hardy, chairwoman of the Greater Lansing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Commission, said it’s the longest standing and largest gathering in tribute to King on the holiday in the nation.

“This year’s theme, ‘the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands i moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy’ although written some 50 years ago, challenges us today to a more personal reflection on our response to recent events in America,” Hardy wrote in the event program.

Thomas said the struggle for equality and justice requires help from everyone in the community.

Just as the Allied Forces defeated the Nazis, African Americans “too had allies,” he said.

“Jewish Americans were our most important allies in our struggle for equal rights,” he said.

Today Thomas challenged us all to be allies for various causes of injustice.

“We have a charge to keep,” he said. And it’s not just for people of color, he said, but for women and those of diverse sexual orientation.

He said he was proud of his role in changing “a lot of bad laws, unjust laws.”

And there are bad laws today.

“Stand your ground is a bad law,” he said. “You must do the same for these bad laws today.”

Former Mayor David Hollister was also honored with the King Legacy and Service Award. Hollister said he was inspired by King in the 1960s.

"We never know how much we will impact others," he said. 

Local middle and high school students were honored as winners of the Martin Luther King Jr. essay contest.

Middle School winners: Ahmed Sufyan,eighth grade, MacDonald Middle School, East Lansing; Tiffany Overstreet, sixth grade, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Academy, Lansing; Madison Foley, eighth grade, MacDonald Middle School, East Lansing; High School winners: Camryn Turner, 10th grade, Waverly High School; Razia Muhammadi, 11th grade, East Lansing High School;  Austin Brown, 11th grade, East Lansing High School.

Scholarship winners were: Deontay Walker, Bath High School; and finalists Tristian Walker, Everett High School, Briana Henderson, Waverly High School and Sarah Bland, DeWitt High School