MLK speaker at Southeast says change requires 'all hands on deck'

Roland S. Martin, the keynote speaker at Southeast Missouri State University's sixth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Dinner, thinks it'll take the energy of every American to influence change in the country.

As the civil rights movement involved more than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., making a difference and fighting injustice will require "all hands on deck," the award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist told a crowd of more than 1,100 Thursday at the Show Me Center.

Living the spirit of King's dream -- the event's theme -- means acknowledging the "meat" of the debate, not overlooking what may be too difficult to talk about, and working toward the change Americans say they want.

"We love the easy stuff, not the tough stuff," said Martin, the 2008 winner of the NAACP Image Award for Best Interview for "In Conversation: The Sen. Barack Obama Interview." "How far are you willing to go to truly be a change agent?"

Martin referred to a clip played at the dinner before his speech featuring bits and pieces of King's many speeches. He said he appreciated that Southeast had a variety of King's speaking engagements because the "I Have A Dream" speech -- and the last third of it -- tends to be overplayed as the country celebrates the activist's birthday. The first parts of the speech, Martin said, where King talks about economic rights, the poor and disparity in the country, tend to be overlooked.

"We like to focus on the nice parts of the speech instead of the hard parts," Martin said.

Martin, a commentator for TV One Cable Network and host of a radio show on WVON-AM/1690 in Chicago, recalled a moment in his career in which he and others acknowledged the injustice in comments made by radio personality Don Imus in 2007 about several Rutgers University women's basketball players.

"When it came to what he had to say the National Association of Black Journalists took a stand. ... The NAACP followed our position and took a stand," Martin said. "What was stunning to me was you heard nothing from feminist organizations. They saw Don Imus' comments as a black thing, but somehow they missed the fact he was talking about women."

So, as a member of the NABJ, Martin said he "called out" some organizations, such as the National Organization for Women, and engaged in a debate about why they weren't expressing concern for the women. All in all, he said, they spent more time debating him than the incident.

"It's a perfect example about how when it comes to fighting injustice too many of us have decided 'Well, that's not really my thing,'" he said. "We sit here and say, 'That's not really my fight.'"

Martin again asked the crowd to recall more of King's words in which he advocated that Americans live up to their ideals.

"We have to have all hands on deck when we talk about how to fight injustice," he said. "We can't call ourselves the United States of America when we have people united against others."

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