A Fading Dream?
Hurricane Katrina rains on Gallup's MLK Day celebration

A sign with a photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is displayed Monday while community members gather for an inter-faith prayer at the Gallup Multi-Cultural Center before embarking on a march to the Mitchell Recreation Center to honor King. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

Members of the Rusty Strings and the Flat Tones band Clara Sroges, front to back, Antoinette Neff, Pat Neff and Kirk Ashworth play their instruments and sing protest songs Monday afternoon at the Larry Brian Mitchell Recreation Center in Gallup as part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day events. Sroges said that she learned many of the songs from her parents who were very active in the civil rights movement when she was a child. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

GALLUP — As odd as it may seem, more than four months after it hit the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Katrina managed to affect Monday's tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The annual MLK Day march and celebration were conducted Monday afternoon in Gallup, but they were smaller events than in previous years.

Mona Frazier, the local president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and one of the main organizers of the MLK Day celebration, arrived back in Gallup less than 48 hours before the tribute began. Frazier had spent several months in New Orleans, caring for her ailing father, who passed away earlier this month.

Frazier said she left Gallup for what she thought would be a one week visit to see family members in Louisiana. That one week stretched to three and one-half months, she explained, because her father's illness was complicated by the stressful conditions caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Without Frazier's presence, other NAACP members had been scrambling the last couple of weeks to organize the MLK Day event. Although the march from the Gallup Cultural Center to the city's northside was much the same as in previous years, the annual prayer breakfast and gospel music service did not take place this year, and the program at the Larry Brian Mitchell Recreation Center was more of an impromptu community gathering than a formal tribute ceremony.

NAACP members Betta Duncan, Mildred Holmes, and Ruth Gilbert help direct this year's informal program.

As in previous years, the 80 or so marchers included a diverse cross-section of the Gallup community and included children in strollers and wagons, peace activists, Native American rights activists, city officials, faith communities representatives, and the typical tag-along, friendly dog.

New participants this year included members of the Gallup Talons basketball team, a local Girl Scout troop, and anti-death penalty activists.

This year's theme was "Remember! Celebrate! Act!" Representatives from the Gallup chapter of New Mexico's Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty, Care 66, the McKinley Citizens Recycling Council, and the National Native American Youth Coalition were invited to share information about their respective groups' goals during the program.

"It feels good to talk about civil rights issues," said Nicole Walker of the NNAYC. In addition to discussing her own organization's goals, Walker led the audience in an enthusiastic chant in tribute to King.

Gallup resident Ruth Gilbert, who marched with King during the civil rights movement, presented the keynote speech of the afternoon. Gilbert reminded her audience that although King had been assassinated, his ideas continue to impact the world.

"The lesson to be learned is you may kill the dreamer," she said, "but you cannot kill the dream." Citing other examples from history, Gilbert said King's calls for justice and liberty have been echoed by other individuals from other times and cultures and will continue to be voiced wherever people suffer injustice.

King's focus on righting the injustice in the world was repeated by Mike Butler, a local peace activist. Although people remember King for his civil rights activism, Butler said many people don't realize King was also a peace activist who vocally opposed the Vietnam War.

Butler referred to two often quoted statements by King about justice: "True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice" and "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

For further information about the work of the NAACP in Gallup, community members are encouraged to attend the group's monthly meetings which are on the second Friday of each month at the Howard Chapel-AME Church, located at 107 E. Wilson. For specific time information, call the church at 863-6490.