Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established in Arizona due to a united front from African-Americans, but many national issues today still tie to the civil rights issues of 25 years ago, said the senior pastor of the First Institutional Baptist Church of Phoenix at a lecture on Thursday.
Arizona Humanities hosted Warren H. Stewart Sr., who spoke on “Victory Together for Martin Luther King Jr.,” as part of its Authors Night series. The talk described the challenging road to a historical achievement; it served as an introduction to a deeper conversation of how to handle race relations in the state and country.
Stewart is a longtime civil rights and religious leader in the Valley. He served as the first general chairperson for Arizonans for a Martin Luther King Jr. State Holiday, a coalition that contributed to the legislative passage of the holiday.
Stewart described how Arizonan African-Americans united to work toward the legislative passage of Arizona’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day and discussed the extensive process to pass the Arizona Martin Luther King Jr. Day legislation.
He connected the historic event to current issues, such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, wherein the government allegedly left a predominantly black town to drink corrosive water for two years.
“Would that have happened in Scottsdale?” Stewart asked.
Stewart also discussed the persistence of institutional racism today. Racism has shifted from more obvious sources such as the Ku Klux Klan to subtler evils, he said.
“Though we don’t have those persons today, we do have systemic racism,” Stewart said.
Stewart referred to eight lessons he learned while working toward the passage of Arizona’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day. as ways communities can unite and fight against racism: maintain leadership under fire, keep focused, broaden your base of support, educate, stick to your principles, build a consensus to reach goals, persevere and believe that God is with you.
“At the height of the civil rights movement, only 13 to 15 percent of black pastors supported Dr. King,” Stewart said. “They felt he was too radical, they felt he was making too many waves.”
Ellie Hutchison, Arizona Humanities Programs Manager, said she was excited by all the new faces attending the event as well as how interactive the experience was.
“This is the first time I’ve seen multiple hands going up at once,” Hutchison said. “Usually everyone is very tentative but they really wanted to be engaged in the conversation and that’s what we’re about.”
ASU alumna Carmen Shudde said Stewart’s was a story that needs to be told.
“Young people, I don’t care how old you are, need to hear this story,” Shudde said.
Stewart said the next step after honoring King with a federal holiday was making concrete changes to improve current systems.
“My message after we won was that we have to move from symbol to substance,” Stewart said. “Now the substance goes back to public education and institutional racism. The issues we are dealing with today, that’s where we have to go from here.”
Contact the reporter at Aida.Chavez@asu.edu
Correction: January 22, 2016
An earlier version of this story misspelled Ellie Hutchison’s name and misidentified her title. She is the Programs Manager at Arizona Humanities.
