(upbeat theme music) - Coming up next on this special Martin Luther King, Jr. Day edition of Arizona Horizon.
We'll speak to Pastor Warren Stewart, who is instrumental in bringing the holiday to Arizona.
Also, tonight we'll hear from Roy Tatem, Jr., the former president of the East Valley chapter of the NAACP and ASU Professor Neal Lester joins us to talk about Dr. King's legacy.
That's all ahead on this special edition of Arizona Horizon.
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- Good evening and welcome to this Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of Arizona Horizon.
I'm Ted Simons.
We begin tonight with Pastor Warren Stewart Sr.
The longtime pastor of the First Institutional Baptist Church in Phoenix.
Pastor Stewart was a key figure in efforts to secure a statewide MLK holiday in Arizona.
That was over 30 years ago.
We spoke with Pastor Stewart about how that effort and other civil rights movements were shaped by Dr. King's religious message.
Pastor Warren Stewart, good to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining us on Arizona Horizon, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
- Great to be here.
This is a great day and a great week.
- Well, and I want to talk to you a little bit about, when you think of Martin Luther King Jr., What do you think of?
- He's a black, he was a black Baptist preacher, third generation preacher, okay?
A product of the church.
- Yeah, I was gonna, and I want to ask you about that and focus, 'cause I think sometimes people forget the religious aspect of Martin Luther King Jr. Has that been forgotten?
- Not really, but it's the civil rights aspect, I guess, overshadows.
But his whole understanding of liberty and justice came not simply from the Pledge of Allegiance, but came from the black church and the struggles for freedom.
He, as I said, his father, his grandfather, they were all preachers.
- So what would be his place, do you think, his place among religious leaders in this country?
- Oh, he was probably one of the most revolutionary religious figures that ever existed in the United States and probably the world.
'Cause he did change the United States and the world.
- Indeed.
- Sure.
- Did that message of his though, did it resonate even more so because it came from the pulpit?
- I believe so because he was non-violent and his greatest strength, he talked about love more than anything else.
And in the face of bitter racism and discrimination and hatred, he talked about love, which is, it comes out of the church.
- Do you think a secular person could have made that kind of impact?
- I don't believe so.
Not, no.
No, I think the gifts God has given him as a preacher, as an orator, as a reconciler, even as a modern day prophet, no.
A secular person could not have done that.
- The position, and you were involved in the Martin Luther King Day, obviously in the holiday, and we've talked about that in the past.
- [Warren] Sure, yes.
Right.
- I don't wanna get too deeply into it again.
- [Warren] Sure.
- But you were involved.
Does the congregation, does your church's congregation do many kind- Do they expect that kind of civil rights activity and attention right now from their religious leaders?
- Very much so.
We advocate what we call Jesus and Justice.
So it's not about just getting into heaven.
It's about having a full and free life here on Earth.
And that includes fighting against racism, injustices, and then inform, yeah.
- When you helped get the Martin Luther King Day holiday here in Arizona, do you think your position as a pastor helped that effort?
- Yes, very much so.
Because I was a chosen leader.
I mean, the very fact I was pastor at First Institute of Baptist Church, I became a leader simply by sitting in that spot.
- Did you find similarities to just, obviously you're not gonna compare yourself to Martin Luther King, but did you find similarities there in working for his holiday?
- Well, sure there were frustrations.
There were, I had threats against my life.
There was criticism, but also there were the victories.
There were the accomplishments dealing with all kinds of people to push for the symbol of what this nation claims to stand for liberty, and justice for all.
- Why do you think we got to that place in the first place with the idea that we're sending the holiday?
Why do you think we got there?
Why do you think we got past it?
- Well, people understood, the majority of the people in Arizona understood the King holiday as a "black holiday."
So with Arizona at that time, heaven, only about 3 to 4% African Americans.
Well, why do you want a holiday for just 3 or 4% of you?
They didn't, we had to educate people from 1986 to 1992.
We had to move them from understanding the King holiday as a black holiday to, as an American holiday, which represents America at its best, bates on the principles in the Constitution, the preamble, et cetera.
- Do you think people still consider Martin Luther King Day a black holiday?
- No.
- You think- - I don't believe - You got past that?
- No, no, no, I think we're past that.
- Yeah, Martin Luther King Jr., I mean, obviously we talked about him, a man of the pulpit, civil rights leader, an icon in many ways.
Is he such an icon now that people forget all the things that he, I mean, you know what I'm trying to say?
Has the icon, has the man been lost in the icon?
- Well, I don't know if it is been lost.
I understand that the younger generations, generation Z and the millennials do not quite understand automatically the whole civil rights movement.
And what King stood for, ironically, this week, King week, the Progressive National Baptist Convention Incorporated, which he helped to co-found, is meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of King Week.
So that is a great opportunity for us.
- I was gonna say, now let's go back to 1986 or whenever.
Could you imagine something like that happening?
- They boycotted.
- Yes.
- Arizona.
- Yes.
- In 1986, they boycotted it, but now they're coming back, what, thirty-something years later?
- Yeah.
- How wonderful is that?
- There were a lot of threatened boycotts back then, and your efforts to get to Martin Luther King Day.
You obviously have led to a lot of attention and celebration and thanks.
- Yes.
- Along with the fact 12th Street in Jefferson now has your name.
You got a street named after you!
- Yes, I do.
And I'm alive.
That's the best, that's the best part about it.
When I go to work, I see that name up there and I'm alive.
- Tell me what does it mean to you, though?
I mean, obviously.
- Well, it, I mean, I'm overwhelmed that the city of Phoenix would think that the contributions I've tried to make as over the last forty-six years as pastor, warranted such an honor.
So I'm very humbled by that.
- And I must say that Dr. King has a street named after him as well.
So you've- - Oh.
Virtually every city.
Every city in the country!
- I know, it's true.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
- But you've joined him here in Phoenix and that has to be a very rewarding experience.
- Yes, sir, very much.
I'm blessed.
- Well, we thank you so much for joining us on this special day.
Thank you, sir, it's good to see you again.
- It's great to see you.
Thank you, Ted, for this interview.
- Up next on Arizona Horizon, a conversation with Roy Tatem Jr., the former president of the East Valley NAACP.
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- Roy Tatem Jr. is the former president of the East Valley NAACP.
He spent his life in public policy efforts and has worked tirelessly to increase African-American representation in political offices around Arizona.
We spoke about how he was inspired by Dr. King's message.
Roy, it's good to see you again.
Thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate it.
- Good to be with you.
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
What does the day mean to you?
- The day means celebration.
It means remembrance.
It means honoring his legacy and the legacy of the Civil Rights movement.
- When you were a kid, when you were growing up, when did you first realize who Martin Luther King Jr. was?
- Interesting that you asked that, because I remember seeing a book in my home with the picture of Dr. Martin Luther King on it, and looking into that book, there were a lot of pictures in it, so I must have been five years old.
And looking through the pictures, I probably, I didn't remember the words, but just looking through the pictures, seeing him in the pool pit, marches, and I could relate to that because I grew up in church, and so many of my family members were either clergy members or served in the church.
And so seeing Dr. King as a pastor made me interested.
But then at the end, Dr. King was in a coffin.
And so at that point in time, the only funerals that I had seen were funerals for old people.
And so, Dr. King was not old in the coffin.
So I had to, I was confused.
And I asked my mother, why was this young man, - Yes.
- in the coffin?
- Wow, what a fascinating story.
And you learned from then on who the man was?
- I did.
- Okay, that's a child's impression of what's going on.
When you got a little bit older, when did you realize who he really was?
- Well, as we got older, and then the conversation came up to introduce the holiday, I believe that was the late eighties.
- Yes.
- During the Reagan presidency.
That was the, so Dr. King, you heard the "I Have a Dream" speech, and even my uncle, I remember my uncle who was pastor, he did the, "I Have a Dream" speech in our church.
And so that definitely caught my attention and to listen to...
I grew up in Virginia Beach and we grew up in a very diverse community, a diverse neighborhood.
So the thought of just black people in one area and white people in another area was foreign to what I was seeing as a kid growing up and to a young adult.
- Wow, isn't that interesting?
You got into politics at a relatively young age.
Was Dr. King an inspiration?
- Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Dr. King, once you understood what Dr. King was asking for, he was asking for public policy changes and obviously influenced the civil rights legislation of 1964.
Voting rights was 1965.
And unfortunately he didn't see it come to pass, but the Housing Act of 1968, which was passed shortly after his assassination.
So Dr. King was not just a pastor, a civil rights leader, he was also a public policy influencer.
I mean, community lobbyist.
- Yeah, I was gonna say, was there a particular, was it that public policy, was there a particular message of his, I mean, was it the "I Have a Dream" speech?
Was there something that just rang a bell with you?
- You know, Dr. King in his mountaintop speech?
- Yes.
- Which was the last speech that he delivered, which was very dynamic, powerful, poetic and forceful, where he literally rolled out some demands that he wanted from the federal government.
And he was instructing the community to take their money outta certain banks and invest it into a local black bank.
He was saying, don't buy certain bread.
And he said, don't buy...
He even said, don't buy Coca-Cola at one point in time.
And so it was interesting to hear somebody, and you don't hear that nowadays, but it was, he was definitely calling out some corporations in America too, because they weren't doing black people right.
- Yeah, yeah.
And as a young black man getting into politics, did you feel like you had to work extra hard?
'Cause you mentioned Southern Virginia.
It is diverse down there, I'm from northern Virginia.
- [Roy] Yeah.
- So I understand the state - [Roy] Yeah.
- up to a certain degree.
it is diverse down there.
Was it difficult getting into politics?
- It wasn't difficult getting into politics because I was willing to knock on doors and talk to community members, register community members to vote.
I had a mentor by the name of Gerald Jones.
He was the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus Chair.
He was a delegate in the state of Virginia.
And so he took me under his wing, actually, as a delegate and mentored me.
- Well, and now you are of the age where you can start mentoring some other folks as well.
- [Roy] Correct.
- How do you increase participation among African Americans in Arizona, in the legislature, in public policy?
- You know, it's great that you asked that, there are a lot of people that are now interested in public policy and they're interested in serving.
I believe over the last couple of election cycles, we've seen a record number of African Americans put their hat in the ring and their name in the ring to run for office.
And some have been elected at the local level.
Some have been elected at the state level.
I believe Sandra Kennedy was the only state-wide elected official at one point in time in the Corporation Commission.
And so we have a couple of, you have a few, quite a few African American mayors and African American council members, a form, some council, people in the legislature.
- Yes.
- So African Americans are represented and continuing to participate in the electoral process.
- Last question.
Expanding, enhancing, voting rights.
What needs to be done in Arizona?
- Well, we gotta stop the voter suppression legislation, even attempted voter suppression legislation.
Last legislative session, we saw over 100 pieces of voter suppression legislation introduced.
Fortunately, a majority of that legislation failed.
And ultimately we need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act that restores the 1965 voting rights bill that was introduced to curb voting suppression nationwide.
- Roy Tatem Jr., it's good to have you here on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Thank you so much for joining us.
- [Roy] Thank you.
Thank you for the time.
(people conversing) - Well, I think the old expression of walked in somebody's shoes is very apropos.
I grew up in the south where I saw signs that said, "colored" for the drinking fountain and the waiting rooms in the train station where it's "colored only."
I didn't like that.
I was in Vero Beach, Florida.
And we went to Miami for the weekend and I saw a sign there that says, of a small hotel, "no Jews."
I took the sign up and threw it away.
I mean, I fought for my country.
I feel lives were unequal in citizen.
And everybody who fought for their country should be an equal citizen.
And we can make this world a better place if we just try.
- ASU Humanities professor, Dr. Neal Lester, studies African-American literature and culture.
His signature program is called "Project Humanities," and it aims to spark meaningful conversation across diverse communities.
We visited with Dr. Lester to talk about the overall impact Dr. King has had on American culture.
Dr. Lester, thank you so much for joining us.
It's good to have you here on Martin Luther King Jr. day.
You were honored last year, - [Neal] Yes.
- as ASU's Martin Luther King Jr.
Faculty Servant Leadership Award.
What did that mean to you?
- Oh my gosh, well, as the inaugural recipient, it was especially both satisfying but also challenging because to live up to that kind of iconic imagery and what that life and legacy stood for was quite humbling.
And it means that it has to be a continual reminder for me that I have work to do, even though I've accomplished some things that people think is important.
- You mentioned Dr. King's life and legacy.
- [Neal] Yes.
- Where, where does his life, his legacy fit, in humanities, in the grand scheme of society?
- Well, I'd like to talk about this in terms of not so much humanities, the discipline, but humanities as it relates to people in our human connections with each other.
And the ways in which Dr. King was centrally focused on humanity and justice and equity and equality.
That's where it fits.
And if we could sort of move away from defining humanities as a discipline, which excludes those who are not in college or those in, you know, fancy schools who are talking about disciplines and talk about how do we treat each other?
That's where Dr. King fits.
How do we treat it?
What is the content of our character?
At the same time, we have to acknowledge that there are differences and not this sort of, we are the world, everybody's the same kind of mentality that too many people want to believe in.
- Why do too many people want to believe in that?
- Well, because it's vanilla and it's easy to digest when we don't have to look at difference.
And we imagine that we don't see color, which itself is problematic, that we don't see difference.
In order to not see difference, we have to pretend that because most of us do see difference, it's the what we attach to difference that becomes problematic.
The value.
- Is that a mess- Is that a recent message?
Is that a message that Dr. King himself would've recognized?
- Oh, absolutely.
If we were to go back, which I've said multiple times, a couple of times on this show, if we go back to read the "I Have a Dream" speech, the very first part of it is to talk about difference there.
Poor people, people who don't have the same rights as others have.
And then if you move to his speech, "The Other America," he talks very specifically about those people who have privilege and opportunity versus those who do not.
So do you have to acknowledge that before you can then figure out how to, do you address the injustices that have led to that, that become the foundation of those.
- So with that in mind, the impact of Dr. King on American culture in general, on race relations, on society, politics, the whole nine yards.
- Yeah.
Well, you know, I think his daughter, Dr. Bernice King sort of sums it up when she says her dad's legacy is about radical love and its radical self-love, particularly as a black person.
But a way in which despite the fact that people don't want us here, whoever the "us" are, we still persist and we have to love you even though you hate us, or even though you wish that we weren't here.
So I think that's what she's really asking for, is this sort of radical nature of community and the radical nature of unity.
And that's what Dr. King stands for.
And that's what Dr. King's daughter seems to be continuing in her legacy about humanity and justice and equality.
- Is American society?
We'll keep it to American society.
Is it getting there?
- Well, it depends on how you measure it.
You know, we can't always measure how we treat each other, but we can measure each, how we are sort of evaluated in the circle that we are in.
Who are the people doing the work that we appreciate and value, rather than trying to imagine this is some broad brush that someday we'll wake up and everybody we'll love each other.
- Yeah, the... - So he was not naive about that.
- Yes, yes.
All of the messages, I mean, the emphasis, Dr. King's emphasis, from where you sit and from how you see and remember and read.
Political, religious, civil rights.
Is there more of an emphasis on any of those?
- Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
They're all together.
In fact, I like that that notion that this is intersectional and they were all one thing, all those things at once.
And to somehow try to parse those out is to sort of miss pieces of that.
So if we can consider that more holistically, I think we get really what Dr. King's legacy and work we're all about, which is about the oneness of humanity.
It's about unity, but it's about the radical nature of that because that's not what society encourages us to do, to unite.
It doesn't encourage us to collaborate, it doesn't encourage us.
It encourages us to compete.
- I was gonna say, why doesn't it encourage those?
I mean obviously competition is at the heart of capitalism and part of a variety of things that we are involved in and surrounds us all.
- [Neal] Yes.
Yes.
- Is that just a simple answer?
It's just because we are a competitive society, not just by nature, but by need?
- Well I- It is, and I hate this sort of cliche, it is what it is.
And I don't think we have to figure out why.
I think we have to look at how it operates and then address the injustices associated with that operation of it.
So Dr. King does speak against capitalism.
He does speak against, you know, as you know, the radical King against the Vietnam War.
He also addressed differences.
And capitalism wants us to compete with each other about small pieces of pie rather than collaborate with each other.
And I don't think it has to be an evil, or I think we have to be aware of this.
Even those who are talking about anti-racism now talks specifically about racism and capitalism being companion pieces.
So economics is part of racism.
- These messages that you're talking about, do they survive- They survive.
Dr. King's message survives.
But does it survive to the extent it might have once survived?
In other words, I think of iconography and I think of Dr. King as, and so many younger folks, especially, they, you know, they weren't around.
Their parents were barely around.
Is something of him and his message lost or is something of him and his message enhanced because of that icon status?
- Well, I think people will recognize Dr. King's name in ways that they won't necessarily recognize Rosa Parks or Malcolm X. I think the problem however, is the fact that in the recent years, and I'll say, you know, since George Floyd's murder in 2020, there's been this move to do away with history and the reality of histories that are the US.
And what I mean by that is by looking at injustices, which King did, then we will start ignoring King's true meaning and the radical nature of his messages.
So if for example, we say, we can't study history, then we really can't study slavery and we can't study Jim Crow and we can't study all of those things that led ultimately to Dr. King's death because as his daughter, Dr. Bernice King says, he was the most hated man in the country when he was shot.
He was assassinated.
People didn't embrace him.
They didn't throw, you know, rose petals at him.
They hated him because he was trying to bring people together.
But he also went to help people who were poor.
So we have to look at racism more intersectionally and not just in terms of what people look like, but the circumstances and the conditions that people live in.
- All people.
- Last question.
Again, from where you sit, how would you like Martin Luther King Jr Day to be celebrated, to be just recognized?
- Well, I don't want to prescribe something for other people.
What I can do is tell you how I do it.
What I do is I drive to educate myself so that I'm learning something that I didn't know this time last year.
So each King evening, after people have done their day of service, they can always come to one of our project humanities events where we're doing everything from banned books on Monday, to the legacy of the radical Dr. King.
And we have people coming and sharing how they are connected with whatever that topic for that particular event is.
So I would challenge people to do something you didn't do last year and to make education part of that piece.
- I was gonna say, to learn something about Dr. King, 'cause there seems like there's always something to learn, isn't there?
- Well, there's something to learn about us, about Dr. King, about, you know, revisit some of those, those speeches.
- Yeah.
- You know, in a new light.
- Yeah.
- That's what I say.
- Dr. Neal Lester on this Martin Luther King Jr Day.
Thank you so much for joining us.
- Thank you for inviting me back.
- And that is it for now.
Thank you so much for joining us on this special Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of Arizona Horizon.
I'm Ted Simons.
You have a great evening.
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