{"id":36440,"date":"2018-01-15T16:18:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T21:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=36440"},"modified":"2018-01-16T11:17:13","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T16:17:13","slug":"rev-risher-urges-mlk-celebration-attendees-stay-woke-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/rev-risher-urges-mlk-celebration-attendees-stay-woke-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Rev. Risher urges MLK celebration attendees to ‘stay woke through this revolution’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Reverend Sharon Washington Risher addresses more than 200 gathered in Lehman Auditorium for Monday’s celebration service.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1967, Sharon Washington Risher heard The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Charleston, South Carolina. Then a little girl, she remembers being summoned with a phone call from her mother to dress in her Sunday best, to walk alone down the street to the hall where he would speak.<\/p>\n

Settled in the back, she remembers, \u201cI couldn\u2019t see, but I could hear Dr. Martin Luther King\u2019s voice and in my young mind, he sounded like what I thought God sounded like,\u201d she told the large crowd gathered in Eastern Mennonite University\u2019s Lehman Auditorium.<\/p>\n

That \u201clittle ol\u2019 Geechee girl from Charleston\u201d knew then that she, too, wanted to speak, to \u201cstand up in front of a crowd and they would want to hear what I had to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Student Clarissa White leads the EMU community in a solidarity march on campus.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Risher visited Eastern Mennonite University to speak at Monday\u2019s celebration chapel service in honor of King. The hour-long service was a culminating activity of EMU\u2019s MLK remembrance events<\/a>, which began Jan. 10 with a religious diversity workshop and continued over the weekend.<\/p>\n

‘Serious times’<\/h3>\n

An ordained preacher and hospital chaplain<\/a> now living in Dallas, Texas, Risher has become, like King, an \u201caccidental activist,\u201d traveling the country to preach a message of love even though she has every reason to hate after her mother, cousins and childhood friend were among those slain in a Charleston church by a white supremacist in 2015.<\/p>\n

“Remain awake through this great revolution,\u201d she admonished, taking the phrase from King\u2019s 1988 sermon in Washington D.C.\u2019s National Cathedral. \u201c\u2026These are serious times we are living in now … as serious as the Middle Passage, as serious as those whips and chains and auction blocks, as serious as the Montgomery bus boycott, the Million Man March, the killing of Trayvon Martin and Tamar Rice, the Million Women March, the killing of nine innocent people in a church, mass shootings all over this country. If we don’t wake up and stay woke, we will have missed all Dr. King fought for. We are living in a new revolution, and it’s just not affecting black people or people of color. This new revolution affects all of us, from each nation and country.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Celeste Thomas, director of Multicultural Student Services, worked with Black Student Union members to plan this year’s MLK Week events.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

National holidays are \u201cnot enough,\u201d she continued. \u201cMagnificent monuments of granite will not alter the pain or alleviate the sufferings of those who still yearn to breathe free. Their lives will not be in vain. We must not permit Martin King\u2019s memorial to be another stop on the tourist bus route. Where are the new activists? Who will when awakened, disturb the church and humanity from its rest? Who will speak when this new era needs a new Martin? Who is there who is prepared to come after him? What preacher in all our churches is ready to fill the void of his leadership?\u201d<\/p>\n

Living into our potential<\/h3>\n

Prior to Risher\u2019s address, Mayor Deanna Reed<\/a> invoked King\u2019s spirit to praise the activism of 2017 and to urge its growth: \u201cThe foundation that Dr. King laid before us gives us today the blueprint we need for us not to sit back and be silent. We can no longer, in 2018, just let things go, especially in the climate we are in today, when we have leadership who thinks it’s okay to make derogatory comments about our African countries, and chalks it up as tough language. We have a lot of standing we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black Student Union<\/a> (BSU) co-president Tae Dews echoed this challenge later, both praising EMU as a \u201cdiverse community founded on the principles of peacebuilding\u201d and \u201cits wonderful potential\u201d while asking for more leadership and involvement in a \u201cplan of racial justice, a plan of bridging the gap between the different diverse communities that we host here, just more intentionality on building that unity here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The week was planned by a committee and BSU members, with guidance from director of multicultural student services Celeste Thomas<\/a>. Many of them participated in the chapel service, bringing scripture and prayer, a litany and music.<\/p>\n