To Yolanda, Martin, Dexter and Bernice
Mrs. Christine Farris and the entire King family
President Bush
Distinguished guests and
Ladies and gentlemen
Good Afternoon
My presence here today
is a result of many things
and many people
not the least of which are my mother,
my family
and my political mentors,
Andrew Young and the late Maynard Jackson.
However my presence here today
as Mayor of Atlanta is equally
a living witness and testimony
to the voices of a freedom choir
A chorus made up of
Septima Clark, Alberta King,
Bernice Scott,
Daisy Bates and Ella Baker,
Jean Young and Mary McLeod Bethune,
Constance Motley and Margie Pitts Hames
Bertha Mae Carter and Rosa Parks,
Viola Liuzzo, Susan B Anthony,
Eleanor Roosevelt, and Ethel Mae Brayboy,
Ethel Mae Mathews, Dorothy Bolton,
Fannie Lou Hamer,
And the newest member, Coretta Scott King.
I am here because they lived
and they struggled.
As most of you know
Mrs. King was a trained
and gifted vocalist and
she joins the freedom choir,
this constellation of guardian angels
equipped with her own songs.
I and we should be grateful that
Coretta King’s extraordinary voice
never trembled in the face of
intimidation, evil or violent attacks.
Her voice was marked by an elocution
that was full of clarity
on the causes of racism,
the senselessness of war,
and the solutions to poverty.
Her resonance had international range
from Sunset Avenue in Atlanta
to the rice paddies of Saigon,
From the tin roof huts in Soweto
to bomb shelters in Bagdad,
From the concert halls of Boston
to the camps in Darfur.
She sang for liberation.
She sang for those who had no earthly reason to sing.
Mrs. King’s commitment to struggle for freedom
forced her to occasionally sing accapella
and too often solo…
Widowed with 4 children to raise
her commitment demanded
that she sing louder and more often.
But mother Coretta
made certain homework was checked,
lunches were packed
and her children were safe.
4 days after her husband was assassinated
with her children in tow she traveled to Memphis.
She addressed those in attendance and the nation
describing within her a propelling moral force
and urge to move forward.
In her words she “was impelled to come…. Concerned not only about the Negro poor, but the poor all over the nation and all over the world.”
The last stanza
and the highest note
of Coretta King’s freedom song
remains to be sung…
She’s gathered us here today
to lift our voices in songs of
freedom, equality, social and economic justice
for our own sake
and for the sake of children the world over.
Who among us will join the freedom choir?
Who among us will sing Coretta’s song
with courage and conviction
to smother the war cries of hatred,
Economic exploitation,
poverty
and political disenfranchisement?
For whom
does the bell toll?
It tolls for me
and for thee.