A Single Voice – Celebrating Black History Month
In honor of Black History month, we take a look at two Civil Rights leaders, past and present and the impact they made in their communities and the world today.
A SINGLE VOICE
by Rebecca Richardson
Benjamin Jealous, the keynote speaker at the annual Martin Luther King luncheon in Peoria, said that change requires commitment and cooperation, it requires finding your calling and acting on your beliefs. Jealous found his calling on a three-hour bus ride from southern New Jersey to New York city.
“I thought about how every generation of my family that I knew about, since before the end of slavery all the way through, had been trained to fight and knew what they were fighting for, and I resolved myself that before I got off that bus … I would decide what I was fighting for,” Jealous said. “And so I started writing down everything that really ticked me off, everything that concerned me about my community, my city, my county, my country.”
In doing so, Jealous discovered his voice. He has spent the majority of his career working to ban the death penalty, end mass incarceration, defending voting right and securing marriage equality for all.
A toast at a 21st birthday party is what prompted him to take action. The toast was for his friend making it to his 21st when so many of their friends had not.
“That notion cut me like a knife, the notion that somebody thought it was an achievement for a young man of any group in the world’s wealthiest democracy, let alone my own group, to simply breath past their 21st birthday,” Jealous said.
At 43, he has made great strides in promoting and fighting for the things he feels strongly about. This is following the trail blazed for him over 50 years ago by men like A. Philip Randolph.
Randolph, was passionate about making a change in his community and the world around him. He founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first African American labor union in the United States, the National Negro Congress and organized the Negro American Labor Council. As he traveled the country organizing and helming the way for African Americans in the labor force his message was clear, “No propaganda could be whipped up and spread to the effect that Negroes seek to hamper defense. No charge could be made that Negroes are attempting to mar national unity. They want to do none of these things. But certainly there can be no national unity where one-tenth of the population are denied their basic rights as American citizens.”
His crowning achievement, however, was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. He along, with five others, John R. Lewis, director of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League; James L. Farmer, national director of Congress of Racial Equality, along with Roy Wilkins, executive secretary for that National Advancement of Colored People, and Martin Luther King, Jr., President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, met in New York city to plan a day that would go down in history. His singular vision and passion for a cause led to the largest peaceful protest in American history and the eventual passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In his speech at the march, Randolph said, “The months and years ahead will bring new evidence of masses in motion for freedom. The March on Washington is not the climax of our struggle, but a new beginning not only for the Negro but for all Americans who thirst for freedom and a better life.” He was part of the generation who lit a torch that has been burning brightly for over 50 years.
Today, it is men like Jealous, who are taking a hold of the torch and keeping it lit for future generations of civil rights leaders and activists. As he spoke, Jealous encouraged the audience to make their own list, to find what drives them and makes them passionate, angry, sad.
“The only thing better than spending your whole life trying to find the perfect thing to make better for your children, and their children, before you die is picking one good thing, and getting it done faster than you think is possible,” he said.