More than a thousand people gathered in Northeast Washington on Saturday for a national prayer service to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., culminating a series of events this week related to the opening of a memorial to the civil rights leader on the Mall.
The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was chosen to host the service after Tuesday’s earthquake damaged the original site of the event, the National Cathedral in Northwest.
The service was held as Hurricane Irene was churning northward up the Atlantic coast, with morning rain from the storm’s leading edge arriving in Washington area. The storm’s threat forced the dedication of the memorial, originally planned for this weekend, to be postponed.
Daisy Apollo, 57, of Chicago stood at the front of the basilica as its bell tower played “We Shall Overcome.”
Apollo said she had just entered high school in 1968 when King was assassinated.
“I can hear my dad even now telling me, ‘They killed that man,’ ” she said. “It so affected me as a child that I had to be here to be part of honoring him and the brotherhood that was his ideology.”
Another who came, William Brown III, 57, said, “I have tried to pattern my life on Dr. King and accept all people for who they are.”
Brown, an architect from Verona, N.J., called the monument “amazing.”
“I appreciate its design,” he said, “but as a man knowing what that man did, I appreciate its strength.”
A chorus of anthems and spirituals, including “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” “America the Beautiful” and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” greeted the celebrants.
People who knew King personally and those born more recently whose lives and religious missions stand as part of his legacy were among those scheduled to speak. They included King’s youngest daughter, Bernice King, and the Rev. Joseph Lowery.
Lowery formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King in 1957 and headed a delegation in 1965 that delivered demands from those participating in the Selma-to-Montgomery march to Alabama Gov. George Wallace. In 2009, he delivered the benediction at the inauguration of President Obama.
The King memorial on the Tidal Basin had been decades in the planning, pushed first by members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity to which King belonged. Members of the fraternity were out in force at the service, notable for the gold-and-black touches in their attire.
0 Comments