Transcripts

DAN OLSON: Saint Paul City Human Rights Director Tyrone Terrill remembers visiting his relatives in rural Kansas and being told at age 8, by a store owner, that children with his skin color couldn't buy ice cream at the counter like the White children, and that he had to go around to the back of the store to be served.

Terrill's experience and that of millions of other Blacks in this country was forced into the headlines in 1968 by the Kerner Commission. The panel appointed by President Lyndon Johnson and headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner after the 1967 race riots, found the United States was moving toward two societies, one Black, one White, separate and unequal. Terrill says the findings stand today.

TYRONE TERRILL: Now, I would change that today by saying we still have two Americas, one White, and then one that's made up of the people of color, the poor in that group. So the Kerner Commission was correct. And until America addresses the race issue, then we're never going to be a great nation. And this nation will never go forward in the manner that it should, until we do that.

DAN OLSON: Gains for American Blacks the past 30 years include an expanding middle class and better school graduation rates. But unemployment for Black men in some of America's inner cities is still at depression era levels. Arrest and imprisonment rates for Black men are triple those for Whites. Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone said there's a long way to go toward equality in this country when people are stopped by police or challenged at the voting booth because of their skin color. Wellstone said poverty is harming the country's poorest children, regardless of their skin color.

PAUL WELLSTONE: And we have a long way to go. When close to 50% of children of color under the age of six are growing up poor in America, we must renew our national vow of equal opportunity for every child in America. That's how we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We have a long way to go.

DAN OLSON: As many as half those attending the Saint Paul Martin Luther King Day observance were White. A few were old enough to remember King delivering his most memorable speeches. Many others were White teenagers who have no firsthand recollection of the civil rights leader. Even so, the remarks of 17-year-old Lauren Jarvis, one of the speakers, had the cadence and quality of a call to action.

LAUREN JARVIS: No country, no community, no group of people can achieve even the smallest goals, unless they are able to work together. That is truly Martin Luther King's dream, that every day, our community becomes stronger and more just when people learn to live together with each other peacefully.

DAN OLSON: Minneapolis poet Dien Bao Phi says living together requires listening to each other. It's one of the themes in his poem "Refugee". In it, the Vietnamese native compares achieving racial understanding to his daunting trip across the ocean to a new home.

BAO PHI: We are for each other, so tell me your story. Listen to each other with ears that only lost tongues can have. Hold each other with arms borne lonely. We call each other family in Hindi, Vietnamese, Hmong, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Tahitian, Tagalog, Thai. So many flavors, so what's on your tongue, sister? What's on your tongue, brother?

Polyglot gobbledygooks plotting out maps to each other, find me, leave a stipend of tears, drop for joy and for pain. Find me, join me, we cross oceans every day. We refuse to desert each other. We see each other. We're for each other. We are each other. Join me, find me, tell me your story. My ear is yours. Talk to me. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

DAN OLSON: Minneapolis poet Dien Bao Phi, one of the speakers at the Martin Luther King Day observance in Saint Paul. Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio.