Nathaniel Williams sings a solo while performing with The Mighty Train of Gospel group during the 15th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration at the Vicksburg Municipal Auditorium. (The Vicksburg Post/PAT SHANNAHAN)

[01/16/01] Racism is a spiritual issue more than a legal issue, Dr. Wright Lassiter Jr. told those at the largest-ever Martin Luther King Scholarship Breakfast on Monday.

“Dr. King was not America’s lawyer,” Lassiter said. “He was a doctor, trying to heal the sickness of racism and racial division.”

A minister and the son of a minister, Lassiter, who grew up in Vicksburg, lives in Dallas. Speaking to about 300 guests in the Vicksburg Convention Center, he pointed to progress and to the path ahead. “This is an ongoing struggle that never ends, and I am convinced that is what Dr. King intended it to be.”

Forty-five years ago, it would have been unimaginable for a black Vicksburg police chief, Mitchell Dent, to be seated beside Martin Pace, the Warren County sheriff, who is white, as they were at breakfast, he said.

“America, like Vicksburg, has changed much since 1955,” Lassiter said.

“I believe that if (King) were here, he would be pleased and proud,” Lassiter said. “But some are concerned, as I am, that the dream Dr. King had has not come to fruition for all people.”

More efficient social services, more jobs, higher wages and more affordable health care are all needed before the dream can be called complete, he said. Black men are born with a 25 percent chance of going to prison, much higher than the rate for the general population.

MLK Day events in Vicksburg included an afternoon of speeches and music at Vicksburg Auditorium and a torchlight assembly at the memorial on Openwood Street erected years ago in Dr. King’s honor. Schools, public offices and many businesses were closed for the observance in honor of the minister who was born Jan. 15, 1929, and died in Memphis in 1968 after being struck by an assassin’s bullet.

Tillman Whitley, curator of the Jacqueline House African American Museum, said at the Vicksburg Municipal Auditorium that black citizens need to make a greater effort to learn about the local struggle for civil rights, a subject he said is rarely discussed or taught in schools.

“History is largely interpretive, and if we don’t interpret our own history, it will be interpreted for us,” Tillman said. “That is what has happened in Vicksburg.”

Vicksburg barber and early civil rights leader Eddie Thomas, who received a community service award at the breakfast, echoed Lassiter’s observation about the need for renewal.

In a campaign to raise money for Freedom Democratic Party delegates to Atlantic City, N.J., in 1964, Thomas recalled, he asked permission to speak briefly at a local church.

He quoted the pastor as saying, “I think enough has been said that everybody ought to already know whether they want to register to vote or not.”

Thomas said he replied, “Reverend, people read the Bible all the time, but every year you still have a revival. That’s the way it is with getting people registered to vote: you’ve just got to keep telling them.”

The breakfast was sponsored for the 12th year by the local chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Money raised at the event goes to scholarships.

Other events are organized locally by the Martin Luther King Day Memorial Committee.