Martin and Alfred: Two Brothers, One Dream
"There is nothing new in the world except the history we do not know," said former President Harry S. Truman. Those words resonated with powerful significance April 3, 2009, when Mrs. Naomi King and Dr. Babs Onabanjo debuted in Savannah a preview of the film, A.D. King, Brother to the Dreamer, Behold the Dream.
The screenings, sponsored by the Savannah Coastal Southern Christian Leadership Conference, were held at the Telfair Museum Jepson Center for the Arts and the Lake Mayer Community Center on the eve of the forty-first anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, assassination.
Whereas Americans generally--and appropriately so-associate the name King with the more famous slain civil rights leader and his widow Coretta Scott King, many are not aware that his brother Rev. Alfred Daniel (A.D.) Williams King also lost his life during the Civil Rights Movement. Although there is some debate over the exact circumstances of A.D. King's death, one of the most moving moments in the film is footage of the King brothers' father, the senior Rev. Martin Luther King, proclaiming that the civil rights struggle may have taken both his sons, but it could not destroy his faith, hope, or love.
"Martin and his brother A.D. and many other leaders walked together, with the members of our communities," said Mrs. Naomi King, the widow of A.D. King. "We faced guns, dogs, billy clubs, bombs, and other terrors, yet we pressed on, and that is what you must do today... A.D. stood by Martin even as Aaron stood by Moses."
The extended film trailer included interviews with numerous civil rights activists speaking about the contributions of A.D. King to the civil rights struggle. Among them were former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Jackson Young, former SCLC president Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, Elder Bernice King, Federal Judge Thelton Henderson, and writer and activist Elizabeth Williams-Omilami. The completed film is currently scheduled to premier in January 2010 at Moorehouse College in Atlanta, followed by a nationwide broadcast via Comcast networks.
Also during the event, Savannah Coastal SCLC president, Rev. Carl W. Scott Gilliard, announced that SCLC will host the organization's statewide convention in Savannah in October.
For more information on Rev. A.D. King and the forthcoming documentary on his life, please visit the A.D. King Foundation website at www.adkingfoundation.com, or telephone Dr. Babs Onabanjo at (770) 873-9265. Visitors to the website may also view the Brother to the Dreamer trailer there.
by Aberjhani
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A native of Savannah, Georgia (USA) Aberjhani is a winner of the Thomas Jefferson Award for his journalism, the Choice Academic Title and Best History Book Awards for his historical writings, the Creative Loafing Critic’s Pick Best Savannah Author Award for...
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I never knew and it strikes me as strange that for 40 years, I've not been aware of King's brother's death in the cause of civil rights. I came to the US in the fall of 1967 and by 1968 (age 8), I understood English well enough to understand my third grade teacher's teary announcement that someone very important had been killed--that was, of course, Dr. King.
The Youtube clip of the A. D. King film looks great: "What a man, what a man, what a mighty man."
Whenever I watch pre-civil rights movement Hollywood films with the white men and women dressed inpeccably in suits, I find myself ill at ease (it's mostly subconscious), because the society depicted in the films represent a time where people of color would not have had a voice.
I have to tell you I was disappointed by the media, which did not interview the reactions of other minorities to the Obama election. We know we rode on the shoulders of the African-Americans. Would little ol' Belle have had the chance to publish in the 90's had it not been for Black literature, which preceeded Asian American lit? 'Course not.
Thank you Belle
I greatly appreciate you gracing this page with your very exquisite painting.
I fully agree that it would have been quite interesting if the media had presented more responses from a wider cross-section of America's cross-cultural communities, but at the same time I'm certain that both the media and historians in general will be revisiting the impact of this particular election for many years to come. In the meantime, perhaps you have just identified an opportunity for any number of writers, which is to begin documenting those responses in interviews, articles, poems, and books.
Aberjhani
Founder of Creative Thinkers International
author of The American Poet Who Went Home Again
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File)
thanks so much . . .
. . . for this post, the history lesson, the call to remembrance. The call to art (Belle! how beautiful!). The call to something *other* than arms.
I seem to find myself
I seem to find myself responding to the call to remembrance a lot these days. Starting to wonder why.
Glad you enjoyed the post Evie.
Aberjhani
Founder of Creative Thinkers International
author of The American Poet Who Went Home Again
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File)