Nearly 56 years after the assassination of civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., about 300 people gathered in rainy downtown Asheville to hear leader Jonathan McCoy speak about how America has still not fulfilled King’s vision.
McCoy addressed a crowd who made the march from St. James AME Church to Pack Square in downtown Asheville to honor King’s legacy.
“We're still marching because, as Dr. King said, America still hasn't lived up to what Dr. King described ‘those magnificent words of the constitution’,” Mccoy said.
McCoy, the Director of the Center for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Mars Hill University and vice chair of the local MLK chapter that organized the annual Peace March and Rally, said current political decisions undermine King’s hopes for the future.
“The Voting Rights Act has been gutted. Roe has been overturned. Brown is being picked apart… Teaching the truth about slavery and segregation is being muzzled in our schools, while admitting and empowering the diverse reality of our society is being condemned.”
Exasperated by the overuse of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech during MLK Day, McCoy focused largely on King’s 1959 sermon, “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart.”
“The overwhelming use of the [I Have a Dream] quote shows that there are too many folks that have a simplistic view and understanding of Dr. King, seeing him as a gentle, comforting fellow who walked through the world dreaming,” McCoy said. “You don't understand what the man was talking about. You just think he's a sound bite.”
McCoy focused on the peril of “soft mindedness,” a less-discussed concept from Dr. King’s sermons. To McCoy, soft minded people “always fear change” and get “security in the status quo.”
The soft-minded also “have an almost morbid fear of the new,” he said. “For them, the most pain of all is the pain of a new idea.”
In the face of this “soft mindedness,” and the people who don’t want to acknowledge the depth of racism in America, McCoy urged residents to “stay awake” and “tough minded.”
“They don't want to talk about slavery and segregation in school. They want us to repress the pain of history. That's what soft-minded folks do, but then they want you to believe they believe in King," he said. "You can't have it both ways. That's why we're marching here today.”
McCoy preached to attendees that the “tough minded” work also requires a tender heart, one that believes progress and change is possible.
“We believe in a perfect union, a more perfect community, because we're tough-minded folks with tender hearts that believe in America,” he said.
The march and rally were part of a larger series of events McCoy helped to organize to commemorate the federal holiday in the Asheville area. Over the weekend, participants took part in a prayer breakfast and candlelight ceremony.
