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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Ticket Availability ... Police Reports ... New Bear Creek fish ladder will help coho salmon ... Ticket Availability ... Police Reports ... New Bear Creek fish ladder will help coho salmon ... ASHLAND 'Love will have the final word' Packed house celebrates MLK's legacy Comment By John Darling For the Tidings DailyTidings.com By John Darling For the Tidings Posted Jan. 19, 2015 at 7:11 PM Updated Jan 20, 2015 at 3:32 PM By John Darling For the Tidings Posted Jan. 19, 2015 at 7:11 PM Updated Jan 20, 2015 at 3:32 PM » RELATED CONTENT What do you think? --> Have an opinion on this story? Send a letter to the editor at www.dailytidings.com/sendletter. » Read more X What do you think? Have an opinion on this story? Send a letter to the editor at www.dailytidings.com/sendletter . • Our View: King's other message • 'Selma' struggle remains relevant today • Civil rights leader to speak at MLK celebration • Ashlanders reminded to champion justice at MLK event • 'It's not a black holiday; it's a people's holiday' • 27th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration in Ash... » Social News At the wildly popular, song-and-dance-filled, 27th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration in Ashland on Monday, the note was sounded over and over that racism, hate and social injustice have been mightily beaten back — but the reality is, much work remains. Speaking to a moving slideshow of Martin Luther King Jr. images, keynoter Geneva Craig, now a Medford resident, said she was an angry teen living in Selma, Ala., but King personally taught her the virtues of patience, even as she was beaten with police billy clubs at the infamous 1965 Pettus Bridge march on "Bloody Sunday," and was repeatedly jailed for demonstrationing against the state’s refusal to let blacks vote. The jam-packed Historic Ashland Armory turned away scores of people, informing them where to watch it on live screens. Craig was happy growing up surrounded by a loving family in Selma, but in her teens became angry about being forced to enter the back door of restaurants, drink from the sink, not the whites-only fountain and because, “if you wanted to save your health and life, your were instructed never to look a white person in the eyes, but hang your head and look at your feet." “You always knew you were at the mercy of a white person, if they had compassion for you,” said Craig, chair of the Diversity Advisory Council of AARP Oregon and clinical program coordinator at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center. “You can understand why I became so angry,” said Craig, choked by tears. “But I was not alone. Others were angry, along with me. Dr. King let us know he needed us. He told me I was intelligent and I needed to learn patience. " “I learned over a lifetime that change is a very slow process ... Amid the sound of billy clubs smacking on human flesh, it took patience to become educated and keep calm while others are in turmoil.” Craig introduced a surprise speaker, Mary Liuzzo Lilleboe of Grants Pass, the daughter of martyred Unitarian Universalist layperson Viola Liuzzo, murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen as she ferried participants of the Selma-to-Montgomery March. A volunteer from Michigan, the white woman was shot dead 50 years ago. (Jan. 20: This paragraph has been corrected; it previously erroneously said Viola Liuzzo was a minister.) “I was only 17, when mom was murdered. The questions we got were, ‘Why doesn’t she mind her own business?’ and ‘It’s not her fight.’ We were asked if it was worth it for her to go down there and march, and I've got my answer: how important it is for us all to vote,” Liuzzo told the crowd of many hundreds. Watching the events, longtime activist and social worker Ben Benjamin of Ashland told of having a white man wave a loaded rifle in his face while he and a female college friend registered voters in rural Alabama, not long after the historic Selma march. “Two of our volunteers were hit with buckshot. It was a hateful time, the whites’ response to our work,” says Benjamin. “It woke me up to the reality of the lives of black people. This man (with a rifle) said it was his lands and acted like he owned all the black people there.” Benjamin and other students, he says, stayed with an uncle of Oprah Winfrey, who was an unknown at the time. D. L. Richardson, emcee of the event for many years — and a native of Selma — said the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which came directly out of King’s Selma-to-Montgomery March, was “one of the most important acts of all time.” Richardson narrated a slide show of many civil rights leaders who died in the past year, most of whom put their lives, reputations and careers on the line to fight for the cause. It included photos of the assassinated Brooklyn cops. King’s wife, Coretta, he said, appreciated marchers’ abilities to come together and realize “we’re all much more alike than different.” Lucien Cruz, a black Brazilian-American in Ashland, said King's march still continues, with segregation still needing to be rooted out of the workplace. Jasna Pecoric of Ashland said the MLK event “is special in our community and inspires by example to live lives of truth and stand up to fear and intimidation," such as she says she experiences working in the GMO ban campaign. “I try to envision what it was like for King to speak the truth under those conditions,” she says. Her partner, Vitaly Geyman, an Australian native, said the U.S. is the only country in the world to have such a holiday and “it’s what America is all about, a unique day to celebrate freedom.” The celebration carried the slogan, from King, on buttons and T-shirts, “Believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” Celebrants later marched from the Historic Armory to the Ashland Plaza, as they do each year, to hear a recording of the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s famed “I Have a Dream” speech, which he gave on the national mall in 1963, then to sing “We Shall Overcome,” Pete Seeger’s anthem for the Civil Rights Movement. By John Darling For the Tidings DailyTidings.com By John Darling For the Tidings Posted Jan. 19, 2015 at 7:11 PM Updated Jan 20, 2015 at 3:32 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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