The Rev. LaDana Clark, of Oneonta, was only 6 years old when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
“I remember it like yesterday,” she said. “I knew something terrible happened to a very good man.”
This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day lands on Monday, Jan. 19 — a holiday honoring the life and legacy of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968.
“Dr. King is my No. 1 human spiritual mentor,” Clark said, who has been a non-denominational outreach minister for the last 40 years.
“I believe God’s love is for everyone. I am a black lesbian Christian,” she said. Born in the 1960s in New York City, Clark has faced multiple forms of discrimination throughout her life. She identifies deeply with King’s approach to nonviolent social change.
Between 1994 and 1996, Clark was a security guard living in Atlanta, where King was born. After getting off work one night at midnight, Clark said, “I felt the spirit of Dr. King. It directed me to go to The King Center,” she said, where King is buried.
His tomb is located in a reflecting pool with an eternal flame, near the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he once preached. As Clark kneeled near the reflecting pool, she said, she had a spiritual experience.
“King spoke to me,” Clark said, “He said, ‘We’ve done all that we can do now. It is up to your generation.’”
In that moment, Clark said it felt like he was passing the torch to her. “I saw his hand reach out to me. I started to weep,” she said.
“Who am I that Dr. King would make such a request of me?” she said to herself.
A security guard patrolling the grounds said to Clark that he never witnessed such an encounter before, she said, adding that it validated that something profound just happened.
This spiritual encounter and many others before and after convinced Clark that “peace is possible. It keeps me going on this mission,” she said.
Clark’s ministry work is unpaid. She has held a variety of other full-time jobs, including a radio DJ, truck driver and bus driver. She is currently an office assistant at SUNY Oneonta supporting the Africana and Latinx Studies Department.
“Dr. King is still relevant today because truth does not die, it rises,” Clark said. “I think every generation needs to participate in the fight. Freedom isn’t free. Each generation has to contribute to remain.”
According to the website thekingcenter.org, “During the less than 13 years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the modern American Civil Rights Movement, from December 1955 until April 4, 1968, African Americans achieved more genuine progress toward racial equality in America than the previous 350 years had produced.”
“I am amazed when I think about how much King and others were able to accomplish on foot without cell phones and social media,” Clark said.
King taught Clark that “we must have faith,” she said. “We have to have education and we have to know the law.”
King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, four years before his death.
“Some people are tired of hearing Black people talk about racism,” Clark said. “Can you imagine how tired Black people are? I am still fighting for equal rights and fairness today.”
Oneonta resident Paul Konye, 26, is a videographer with Otsego Media and a rap artist who openly sings about his faith. He was born 31 years after King was assassinated, and yet King is a “very strong inspiration of mine,” he said.
“In my eyes, the most powerful thing that Dr. King did was lead from a place of humility,” Konye said. “I say this because Dr. Martin Luther King fought violence with non-violence. Everyone celebrates his wins, but not many people honor his losses.”
“This man did get in trouble with the law,” he continued. “This man did go to jail for these beliefs. This man was disliked and still chose love. This is true humility … This is leadership.”
“My songs come from a place of hope that there is a light at the end of every dark tunnel,” Konye said.
As his mentor King said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that.”
Oneonta NAACP annual celebration
Frederic Chrislip is a member of the Oneonta NAACP. He is spearheading this year’s annual free MLK commemoration, scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18 at Elm Park Methodist Church.
“When Dr. King was alive, his message touched me, and I wept when he was killed,’ Chrislip said.
The Rev. Kenneth Simurro and Oneonta NAACP President Poletta Louis will kick off the event. Alicia Richardson, Hartwick College’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging administrator, will speak about the importance of persistence at the event.
Attorney Andy Puritz will read King’s most famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” for the third year in a row. King ends this speech, which he delivered to 250,000 people in Washington, D.C., in 1963, with the same words that are engraved on his tombstone: “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last.”
Chrislip will be performing in several musical numbers as in years past and will sing the gospel song “Free at Last.”
“For several decades, it appeared that civil rights were gradually moving forward, but progress has been reversed in the past year,” Chrislip said. “The Trump administration is working relentlessly to turn back racial equality, deny Black achievement, and erase Black history. This is an evil and inexcusable scheme.”
“As a minister of the gospel, a minister of spiritual truth and community justice, my theological perspective is simply this,” Clark said. “Whatever truth that Jesus, God or Spirit gives me or anyone else, it is not just for us. It is for whomsoever.”