'I spoke my dream into existence.' Framingham church hosts annual MLK Jr. breakfast

NATICK — Nomso Emetarom was telling people about his dream since he was a kid.

He remembers those conversations in elementary school, when he told friends he would go to law school and do something big.

“In order to achieve what I’ve achieved, I spoke my dream into existence,” said Emetarom, a 2020 Suffolk University Law School graduate, on Monday morning at the Verve Hotel Boston Natick, Tapestry Collection by Hilton. He's a junior attorney through the Robert Half staffing agency.

Emetarom was one of several speakers at the Greater Framingham Community Church’s 35th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast. This year’s event was hybrid — attendees could either watch online or go in person.

Emetarom sees his story as a testimonial to King’s message. He faced struggles on his career path, especially as a Black man, but he pushed through to achieve success.

“There were even times where I felt like it was impossible,” he said. “However, my faith in God, myself and my dream far outweighed those obstacles. This is relevant on this day because Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. manifested his dream through his faith in the Lord and his unwavering commitment to his dreams, despite all the odds. As a result, his dream was able to live beyond his own life.”

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As it does every year, the church highlighted a quote from one of King’s speeches. This year it came from his famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.

“Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream,” King said nearly 60 years ago at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

E. LaBrent Chrite, Bentley University’s first African American president and the event’s keynote speaker, said King’s teachings are still relevant today because the world is in need of “moral repair.”

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“I struggle to understand how a country has been able to reverse so considerably from Dr. King’s vision,” Chrite said.

He touched on national issues such as the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attacks, the potential curtailing of voters' rights and the false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

While those are problems largely being peddled by the Republican party, he said progressives also share some blame for being misguided in their messaging and failing to solve the issues most Americans care about.

The pandemic has highlighted racial inequities, he said.

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“The shockingly disproportionate mortality and morbidity rates associated with COVID-19 on communities of color, combined with the inability for Black and brown and other marginalized communities to withstand the harsh flows of the pandemic’s economic fallout is a powerful affirmation of these truths,” Chrite said.

But people of color have been at a disadvantage in this country long before the pandemic, he said.

“While America is not a racist country, racism is a prevalent and arguably dominant feature in its historical embrace of Black and brown people,” Chrite said.

To combat this, Chrite emphasized the importance of the private sector and capitalism to escape structural poverty.

He knows the power those can play in elevating someone’s life as a former dean of the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business and in his time as a university president at Bentley and, previously, Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. He said he understands capitalism is not a perfect system, but he has “yet to see a comparable alternative.”

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One piece of advice Chrite shared was to embrace a universal display of “empathy, patience, understanding and love” for one another.

He said King found a way to express empathy for people who stood for everything he was against, including racist police officers in the Deep South.

To understand King’s impact, it's important to understand his approach to achieving his dream of freedom and justice for all people, said 17-year-old Jacob Crutchfield-Jones, who served as the event’s youth presenter.

King emphasized the importance of protesting peacefully, about making a statement through “silent noise," he said.

Crutchfield-Jones pointed to an event at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on Dec. 20, 1956. King spoke at the church about ending a bus boycott that had been sparked by Rosa Parks a year earlier, when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. The boycott was a success. On Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the federal district court’s ruling that racially segregated seating on buses was unconstitutional.

King called for the boycott to end, noting that the mission was accomplished.

“There he preached, ‘It is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation,'" Crutchfield-Jones read to the crowd. "'So, in a quiet dignified manner, we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery until the sagging walls of injustice had been crushed by the battering rams of surging justice.’”

Cesareo Contreras can be reached at 508-626-3957 or ccontreras@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @cesareo_r.

This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Greater Framingham Community Church 35th annual MLK Day breakfast