Salisbury native Donald Graham, now a federal judge in Florida, issued a challenge to his hometown Monday.
Help someone else.
Transform your community for peace and justice.
Saying he’d commit the first $1,000, Graham urged his audience at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast to start a mentoring program like the 5,000 Role Model Plan in Miami.
He proposed organizing 100 to 200 people from all walks of life to serve as role models — “everyone who believes in our young people.”
The role models would go into schools once a month to lead lessons for third- to sixth-graders on such subjects as the prison system, exercise and health care. On career day, each child would accompany a role model to work.
“I’m not here just to deliver a message,” Graham said. “I’m here to challenge you to do something about it, one kid, one adult at a time.”
He said everyone has responsibility for the children of the community.
“If you do your job, no gang member or drug dealer will walk around in pumped up sneakers and air for brains,” Graham said.
Graham said he wanted 500 families to invest $100, 100 businesses to contribute $1,000, five businesses to contribute $10,000 and one business to give $25,000 ó and dropped Food Lion’s name as that possible donor.
Food Lion sponsored the King Day breakfast for the fifth year in a row. President and CEO Rick Anicetti smiled and applauded Graham’s suggestion.
Graham also committed $100 on behalf of his mother, Mildred Graham of Salisbury.
Graham addressed an overflow crowd of more than 300 at the Civic Center. People lined up in the cold outside well before the 7:30 a.m. start. During the meal, organizers asked those who had finished eating to give their seat to someone who had not.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, one of several public officials to address the gathering, said she was proud that her husband, Bob Dole, was one of the leaders in the Senate who pushed for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
She recalled giving a King Day speech in Statesville just two days after her 102-year-old mother’s funeral. And she relayed a conversation she had with her mother ó their last, as it turned out ó in which Dole thought her mother showed traits key to harmony in the community: a positive outlook, despite her own pain; an interest in other people and encouraging words about teamwork and camaraderie.
Commenting on behalf of the county commissioners, Chairman Arnold Chamberlain described himself as “an old Southern white boy” who took a long time to come to appreciate the civil rights leader.
“Dr. Martin Luther King was a great man,” Chamberlain said. “He was called to do great things. So are we.”
During his keynote speech, Graham said he appreciated Chamberlain’s honesty.
“We need to revisit our history,” Graham said. Some people were not born or aware when King led the civil rights movement. Others were misled by family members, leaders and politicians of the day.
“If we don’t visit our past. the quality and success of our future is limited,” he said.
Graham talked about visiting the National Civil Rights Museum, on the site of the Lorraine Motel where King was killed in Memphis, Tenn. When a visitor steps into the lifesize bus that is one exhibit, a voice barks, “You can’t sit here, move to the back of the bus.”
But Graham didn’t need to visit a museum to know that. He talked about childhood visits with his grandparents on Boundary Street, across from the bus stop.
“I would watch these little old ladies get on the bus, shuffle all the way to the rear, past great seats, because they couldn’t sit there.”
He felt that something wasn’t right. “I didn’t fully understand the dynamic of the day.”
One museum exhibit includes the lunch counter from a Greensboro store ó a reminder to Graham of the Woolworth’s in Salisbury, where he had to walk past the lunch counter to get to the “colored” bathroom and “colored” water fountain.
Those signs would puzzle his grandson today, he said. The child would protest that the water was not colored, nor were the walls of the bathroom.
He said sexism has changed as well as racism, and he pointed to Senator Dole and his introducer, U.S. Attorney Anna Mills Wagoner, as examples.
“So we all benefited by the teachings of Dr. King,” Graham said, “His legacy goes on.”
The breakfast was organized by the Salisbury-Rowan Human Relations Council.
Contact Elizabeth Cook at 704-797-4244 or editor@salisburypost.com.