MLK legacy honored

A virtual event in Clovis and a walk from Portales' Memorial Building to the Campus Union Building at Eastern New Mexico University honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday.

In addition, a special program assembled by ENMU students, faculty and Portales community members was aired twice on Monday on KENW public television.

The keynote speaker for the Clovis virtual event, organized by the Clovis Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, was Marsha Hardeman, a member of the University of New Mexico's Africana Studies faculty.

Her theme was "Everything Old is New Again," the title of an upbeat song of the 1970s, but her take on the theme was somber.

To her, the U.S. Congress' current resistance to pass a voting rights act and actions by state governments that place new limits on voting opportunities that seem to target minority voters have set the civil rights movement back to the 1960s,

"We have the same old fights, and the same old racist rhetoric," she said. We're hearing it all over again now."

The event included presentations by U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez and a representative for U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Lujan. Both emphasized the importance of federal voting rights legislation, which has passed the House of Representatives but is facing near-certain death in the Senate, as Senate Republicans are poised to employ a filibuster that would require the legislation receive 60 votes for passage.

Hardeman laced her presentation with remembrances of the early days of the Civil Rights movement, and said that with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the U.S. finally became a democracy.

She recalled "literacy tests" of the pre-Civil Rights Act days in which Black voters were often asked questions like "how many beans are in this jar?" or "how many hairs are on my head?" and thus were barred from voting.

She also remembered traveling with a cousin by bus from Louisville, Ky., to Tampa, Fla., in the early 1960s and being required at one stop in Alabama to use a back entrance to a shoddy diner.

She remembered that when she and her cousin returned to the bus, her comic book collection had been removed from her seat.

When she and her cousin asked about them, the driver took them to new seats in the rear of the bus, where the comic books had been placed, and there was a curtain that separated Black riders from white riders at the front of the bus.

Hardeman said she was sad because in 2022, 56 years after the Civil Rights Act, "we still haven't got it right."

She said society has become lax about civil rights.

"We need to fire it up all over again, if we want to keep our beloved community," she said.

Lujan's statement, read by an aide, Constance Williams, read in part, "Across the country, states are enacting laws that make it harder for the American people to vote. But despite these shameful efforts to weaken our democracy, we must continue to fight for King's legacy because he understood true political change runs through the ballot box."

That is why, Lujan's statement read, Congress must pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Fernandez said a failure to pass voting rights legislation threatens democracy itself in the face of recent attempts to make it harder for minority members to vote, especially in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots at the capitol, which were anti-democratic.

She said the Senate should rid itself of the "Jim Crow rule of the filibuster." The filibuster rule is cited as the main reason voting rights legislation will not pass in the Senate.

The program also included musical performances by students at the Arts Academy of Bella Vista in Clovis, and talks by Joyce Pollard, who chairs the King Commission, Clovis Mayor Mike Morris and other officials.

In Portales, about 100 marchers, including ENMU athletes, students and Portales residents, gathered in the evening at the Memorial Building for an invocation by Steven Gamble, president emeritus at ENMU, and short presentations by officials about the meaning of the holiday.

Then the gathering set off as the sky darkened for the ENMU Campus, escorted in by Portales Police.

The Portales High School marching band followed them, periodically playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."

Following the walk, participants gathered for snacks and beverages in ENMU's Campus Union Building.