Springfield commemorates MLK Day; speakers remind civil rights leader's work is not done

Springfield remembered the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with speeches at an annual breakfast and afternoon unity march on the federal holiday celebrating the slain civil rights leader's legacy.

More than 600 people turned out for the annual Martin Luther King Jr., Memorial Breakfast Monday at the Wyndham Hotel put on by Springfield Frontiers International. Speakers reminded the crowd that King's work was not finished despite the successes of trailblazers such as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and U.S. Attorney Greg Harris.

Brown Jackson is the first Black woman and former federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court. Harris was the first Black U.S. attorney sworn in for the Springfield-based Central District of Illinois.

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Keynote speaker Gerald A. McWorter, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the great-great-grandson of the founder of the first town legally set up and registered by an African American, helped plan and participated in King's marches in Chicago. McWorter also worked closely with others from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, including civil rights activist, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, a past speaker at the Springfield breakfast.

"One of the interesting things is that people began to realize that the South was south of the Canadian border' in the sense that residential segregation, for example, was the highest in Chicago of any of the major cities in the U.S.," McWorter noted in an interview before the breakfast. "The housing struggle was very intense because the real estate industry had red line districts and segregation, so when King came to Chicago there were marches to bring attention to this."

As a child, McWorter recalled going back to New Philadelphia, an integrated settlement in Pike County about an hour west of Springfield, with his parents. His great-great-grandfather Free Frank McWorter purchased his own freedom and that of his wife's, Free Lucy McWorter, along with more than a dozen other former slaves.

Gerald McWorter and his wife, Kate Williams-McWorter, teamed up to write “New Philadelphia,” (Path Press, Inc.) in 2018 about the settlement. In December, New Philadelphia was designated a National Historic Site.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Springfield and newly sworn-in congresswoman Nikki Budzinski of the 13th District both pledged in remarks at the breakfast to help make the site of the 1908 Race Riots in Springfield become a National Historic Site.

More:What's open on MLK Day? Government offices and schools are closed but museums are open

The annual King day observances come as national attention turns to Springfield after the Dec. 18 death of Earl L. Moore Jr., a Black man, was ruled a homicide following treatment of two emergency medical services workers.

While the death of Moore saddened him, Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder, who also spoke at the breakfast, said body camera footage worn by Springfield Police officers during the call was an impetus to bringing charges against Peggy Jill Finley, 44, and Peter J. Cadigan, 50, both of Springfield.

"We can never imagine that body cameras would capture the final moments of Earl Moore Jr.'s life on a medical call," Langfelder said. "When Earl Moore Jr. made the 911 call, he was hoping for an oasis of care. Instead, it ended tragically and sadly breaking all of our hearts."

The community "must and will look at every aspect of the system to determine what went wrong and how can we make changes to assure there's never another tragedy like this," the mayor added.

Local groups used the annual unity march to call awareness to Moore's family and the racial disparities of health care services.

About 150 people marched in spitting rain from Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, including Moore's mother Rosena Washington and other relatives.

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, sspearie@sj-r.com, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Speeches, march commemorate Martin Luther King Day in Springfield