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Brown talks Haiti at MLK breakfast
Benefit concert in the works
Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by JEFF NEWMAN
The Mt. Olive United Methodist Church men's choir sang a number of gospel hymns during the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast at the Rod ‘N' Reel Restaurant Monday morning.
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When Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown (D) stepped up to the podium at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on Monday morning at the Rod ‘N' Reel Restaurant in Chesapeake Beach, he had a number of talking points to choose from.
He could have chosen, most obviously, to lead off with a summary of King's many accomplishments. He could have remarked on the breakfast he and those in attendance had just enjoyed or the beautiful weather outside. He could have talked about his own experiences as Gov. Martin O'Malley's right-hand man.
But he didn't.
Instead, Brown elected to begin his address with a plea for the people of Haiti and call to action for those unaffected, untouched in the United States.
"Today is the day we remember the life of Martin Luther King Jr., but it's also a national day of service," Brown said before a crowd whose members had just finished a meal of eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes and biscuits. Meanwhile, millions are still recovering from last week's earthquake, which may left behind 200,000 dead, according to some estimates.
But as devastating as the quake was and its aftermath still is, Mother Nature was not responsible for the suffering in Haiti, Brown said.
"It's that lingering poverty that afflicts those people," he added. Brown astutely pointed out that it was no longer the civil rights movement, but the fight against poverty and for economic justice that consumed King in the final days leading up to his assassination on April 4, 1968.
"Today, we should ask, how are we doing Dr. King?" Brown said. In a country where 40 million live in poverty, more black men are in prison than in college and black families earn salaries that are 62 percent of what white families earn, "genuine equality of opportunity is not true today," he added.
Joyce Freeland, president of the Calvert County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, echoed Brown's sentiments after the breakfast, emphasizing the need to bridge "gaps" in society and, right now, help the Haitian people.
"It was exciting to have the lieutenant governor to come and talk about the legacy of Dr. King and what we still have to do," Freeland said.
To that end, Dante King, pastor of the Greater Mount Zion church in Prince Frederick, announced intentions to hold a benefit concert next month for the earthquake victims. Sgt. Larry Titus of the Maryland State Police, a liaison officer with Calvert County public schools, said plans are to hold the concert at the Mary Harrison Center in Owings on Sunday, Feb. 7, but that nothing had been finalized.
In addition to his remarks on Haiti, Brown recognized those who King believed to be the true heroes of the civil rights movement — James Meredith, Medgar Evars, those who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and sit-ins and the four girls killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala. Brown also pegged the "my four little children" sentence as his favorite from King's iconic 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech.
After his address, Brown was presented with a painting of President Barack Obama, with whom he attended Harvard Law School.
Later in the program, retired educator Glossie Leake extended a salute on behalf of the Calvert County Concerned Black Women to Gladys Sewell-Brown, Leake's former pupil and current chief operating officer of Sewell Funeral Home in Prince Frederick. Sewell-Brown is the first and only black woman to be a licensed mortician in the county, Leake said.
Gladys Jones of the College of Southern Maryland also presented a $1,000 scholarship to Teairra Jones, a current CSM student with plans to transfer to the University of Maryland University College and study business administration.
Sprinkled throughout the program were soulful gospel performances from the Mt. Olive United Methodist Church men's choir.
