SELMA PROTESTER OFFERS INSPIRING KING DAY SPEECH

On March 7, 1965, in Selma, Ala., police and state troopers armed with tear gas and clubs set upon a group of protesters walking across the Edmond Pettus Bridge. They were protesting poll taxes and unfair written tests that had limited black voter registration in the county to 1 percent.

The bloody scenes from the bridge were broadcast on all the national news shows. Two weeks later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a peaceful march across the bridge and 50 miles on to the state capital, Montgomery. Within months, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

James Webb was a young civil rights worker in both marches. Years later, the diminutive man was shown standing up to a deputy sheriff in the civil rights movement documentary "Eyes on the Prize." Webb put his life on the line, says his friend, the Rev. David Allen of St. James AME Church in Cape Girardeau. But everybody had a part to play in the movement, said Webb, now a Selma pastor.

"I am not an exception to the rule of civil rights workers."

Webb's stirring speech was the centerpiece of the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Community Celebration attended by a few hundred people Monday night at Greater Dimension Church.

Invoking the names of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Webb said they knew that "none of us can survive without each of us."

Rooted in faith

The civil rights movement in the 1960s accomplished what it did because it was deeply rooted in faith, Webb said. "Whoever you are, you need to have something deeper than yourself to hold onto."

Being serious about education, economics, inclusion of each other and about faith are the keys to continuing the work of the movement, Webb said.

"Commit yourself to make the world a better place."

Cape Girardeau has a special place in his heart. His daughter, Michelle Gary, four months ago became the first African American woman commissioned as an officer by the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

Dennis Rigdon, coordinator of Project Hope in Cape Girardeau, received the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award Monday night.

Project Hope is a faith-based mentoring program that helps people moving from welfare to work help themselves. Participants are trained to set goals they can accomplish on their way to becoming self-sufficient.

From March through November 2000, Project Hope donated 13 cars to people in the program. Lack of dependable transportation is one of the primary reasons people struggle to join the workforce, program officials maintain.

In accepting, Rigdon thanked the numerous others involved and called King "my greatest American hero."

Challenge issued

At the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast earlier in the day, the first black woman to hold the position of executive director of the Missouri Commission on Human Rights used the civil rights leader's own words to challenge the gathering to make Dr. King's dream a reality.

Quoting King, Donna Cavitte urged the audience to "Pray together, struggle together, stand up together for freedom knowing that we will be free one day."

Cavitte has worked with the commission for 27 years and became the executive director in 1998. Her goal is to bring it a "new sense of respect and viability," she said in an interview afterward.

"For years, people thought the commission was there only for blacks," she said.

In her speech, Cavitte pointed out that Missouri began observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day a year before the national holiday was declared, and that disability was a protected category in Missouri 12 years before Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

With one exception, Missouri's minorities are protected from discrimination by law, and the commission is working on new protections to prevent discrimination due to sexual orientation, Cavitte said.

Dr. King preached that violence and oppression must never be answered with violence and oppression, Cavitte said, but that "We have to speak out when we see oppression in any form."

This is everyone's work, Cavitte said, not just the work of those whose job is to prevent discrimination.

"Simply having the laws is not enough. We cannot do it alone."

Howard Meagle, general manager of KFVS-TV, received an appreciation award from the sponsors of the event.

Fifty people attended the first Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast 16 years ago. About 775 people sat at tables filling the floor of the Show Me Center Monday.