Allan Appel Photo
Holder-Winfield (with Wyman): Reclaim men we don’t see.
A hearse traveling through East Rock had no body inside — but 125 shouting bodies accompanying it.
The occasion Sunday morning was the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Love March, organized for the 42nd year by Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church on Lawrence Street in East Rock’s Goatville section.
The hearse offered a fresh opportunity to seek meaning in the late civil rights leader’s legacy in the context of today’s challenges for people in New Haven.
Pastor Kennedy D. Hampton Sr (right).
As Pastor Kennedy Hampton Sr. (son of march founder George Hampton) led the stalwart crowd in putting on hats snugly and singing spirituals as they paraded out into the cold to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy, he said it is not unusual to have a symbol in the entourage.
He recalled that the parade in the past has had a mule, symbolizing the poor; and more recently a bus that symbolized the famous incident with Rosa Parks that triggered the Montgomery bus boycott early in the civil rights movement.
So why an empty hearse in New Haven in 2012?
Hampton said the hearse marked the 34 homicides that occurred in New Haven in 2011 as well as the violence that occurs daily all over the world.
“The emptiness of the hearse is important. It’s a reminder not to put anyone else in it in 2012,” Hampton said.
Among the verses he led his congregants and marchers in: “We Shall Overcome .. (black and white together) …” “Don’t wait for a hearse to carry you to church.” And “Lay down your guns, not our sons.”
In a stem-winder of an address to the congregation, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro said called the empty hearse “a sobering reminder of unfinished work.”
In particular she charged the young people in the audience to fight against current assaults on voting rights. And she called on everyone to do more, including elected representatives like herself, to fight hunger, unemployment and poverty.
After she paraphrased King’s remark that a sign of maturity is the ability to engage in self-criticism, DeLauro sat down to a standing ovation.
New Haven state Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield drilled down deepest in exploring how an empty hearse might relate to the King legacy.
And how that might specifically affect the lives of young people in New Haven.
“Dr. King talked about invisibility,” Holder Winfield said. He invoked the relevance of Ralph Ellison’s iconic 1953 novel Invisible Man. “Some of the most invisible people are young blacks,” he said. “That’s because we project on them negative tropes of young blackness.”
Those include stereotypes about young blacks being criminals, uninterested in success.
Holder-Winfield said that many young black men are “invisible” even to the older black people in their own communities.
“Getting away from invisibility” is an important part of the King dream, he said.
“Neighbors walking together, rediscovering each other” — that’s what Holder-Winfield said the empty hearse and the King legacy meant to him.
In a MLK Love March tradition, visiting politicians were asked not only to contribute to the church’s collection for student scholarships, but also to pass the receptacles.
State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney bent against an icy wind as he and an entourage of politicians both local and statewide made what has become an almost required political visit to participate in Shiloh’s rousing annual Love March and church service. Among others in attendance were Mayor John DeStefano, state Sen. Toni Harp, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, State Comptroller Kevin Lembo, Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, and U.S. Senate candidate Chris Murphy, attending for his first time.
After the parade made a large rectangle from Lawrence down Whitney to Edwards, then up State and back to the Shiloh sanctuary, there were gospel songs in praise of Jesus, punctuated by moments of individuals inspired to dance and sing on their own.
“You got a prayer,” called out Hampton, “get it out!”
Click here to read about and watch highlights from last year’s march.
