The guest speaker at the 8th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Prayer Breakfast Monday at St. Mary’s College of Maryland delivered an unapologetic message of support for President Barrack Obama. But, Dr. E. Faye Williams said she wasn’t delivering a campaign speech. “It’s about Dr. Martin Luther King,” she said.
Williams is president/CEO of National Health Options, one of the businesses inspired by the 1995 Million Man March. She is also chair of the National Congress of Black Women and the Black Leadership Forum.
Williams said the country had a choice four years ago of a white woman or a black man, and either would have been a good choice. She praised Obama for choosing his opponent Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. She said Obama delivered a message of hope and change. “He is struggling to make change is the face of a whole lot of pushback,” Williams said.
She said many people in America have only one agenda: to make Obama a one-term president. “It is up to you and me to say to them ‘This time you will not win’,” she said.
Williams knows the president and first lady personally and she blasted the way they are portrayed in the media, particularly on Fox. And, she was highly critical of the way the first lady’s appearance has been portrayed recently, saying many women would die to have a figure like hers.
The keynote speaker visited the MLK Memorial before coming down for the St. Mary’s College event. She noted the messages at the monument. She said those messages provide the framework upon which to live by, but the doors and windows to fill in those frames need to be built by everyone in the community.
Williams got a strong positive response by saying that Dr. King wouldn’t have been who he turned out to be without the courage of others, including women, who preceded him. She emphasized the role of Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, AL. She urged people who have lived through the struggle to encourage young people to take up the fight. “If you have been through the fire, you know what the fire feels like.”
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D: 5th) also attended the breakfast, the first of three events on his schedule. Hoyer noted that Dr. King lived 14,303 days on earth. “Those days were the days the Lord gave us Martin,” he said.
Hoyer said he had seen the previous evening a commercial for L’Oreal that said: “There is a story behind my skin.” Hoyer added, “There is a story behind Dr. Martin Luther king’s skin. Dr. King knew the skin was the superficial part of all of us.” And he also quoted Bill Clinton as saying, “We are all 99.5 percent the same.”
Hoyer quoted the constitution: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” He said Dr. King’s 14,303 days on earth “were dedicated to the realization of those words.”
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