YOUTH WORK EARNS WOMAN KING AWARD

The quest for equality in America is "an unfinished revolution," Dr. Frank Nickell told the assemblage Monday at the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Celebration.

Debra Mitchell-Braxton, recognized for her tireless work on behalf of African-American youth in the area, received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award.

The event at St. James AME Church was attended by about 75 black and white people who held hands and sang "We Shall Overcome" at the end.

The impassioned speech by Nickell, the director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast, was greeted with a standing ovation. He provided a history of the civil rights movements in the U.S., dating from the Abolitionists to the current phase he criticized as "outreach."

"Past movements were concerned with outreach," he said. "The leaders and the issues were looking you in the eye, if not in your face."

Nickell called for making the end of racism part of everyone's daily agenda.

"If we could stop the cycle of oppression and denial and reach across the lines of race to find ways of enhancing the strength of our diversity ... we could positively strengthen our institutions, our neighborhoods and the society in which we live and work," Nickell said.

Mitchell-Braxton is the assistant director of the Campus Assistance Center. She was cited for the time and financial support she gives to many National Association for the Advancement of Colored People programs, including Back to School Stay in School; the Thanksgiving Dinner; the Washington, D.C., trip; the Slam Dunk; swimming lessons and band camp.

Mitchell-Braxton also is on the board of the Cape Girardeau Civic Center, helps lead a Civic Center girls group and is a volunteer reader at Clippard Elementary School. She also serves on the school's master plan committee and a committee studying African-American students' test results.

"I will continue until my bones are bare to serve Cape Girardeau and the outlying community," she said.

Also speaking Monday was Dr. K.P.S. Kamath, a physician who discussed the tradition of nonviolence King drew from. King learned from Gandhi, who was inspired by Thoreau, whose ideas can be traced to the ancient Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita, Kamath said.

Gandhi, he said, practiced "militant nonviolence, provoking his adversaries into attacking him."

Kamath criticized those who threw rocks at a recent Ku Klux Klan rally in Memphis. "When you win freedom using nonviolent techniques, you achieve redemption for yourself and your adversary," he said.

On display next to the St. James AME choir was the newly completed Martin Luther King Jr. flag. The flag includes 22 stars for the number of times King was arrested for demonstrating and five colors that represent every race on Earth.

Other recipients of the King award were present, including Michael Sterling, Ferd Sturm, Fred Pennington, Marie Walker and Juanita Spicer.

Sterling is the president of the Cape Girardeau Branch of the NAACP.

A number of Cape Girardeau clergymen spoke at the event, hosted by the Rev. David Allen of St. James AME Church. Also speaking were the Rev. Philip Curran of the First Christian Church, the Rev. Brendan Dempsey of First Presbyterian Church, Andy Pratt of the Baptist Student Center, and the Rev. Wiley Reed of the Second Baptist Church.