On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, for the 37th year running, the Ministers Alliance of Rhode Island celebrated its scholarship recipients.
For the first time, it happened on Zoom: The coronavirus pandemic has changed so much in the past year, and forced this annual tradition to go remote.
Some things, though, haven’t changed, even since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. himself was speaking about them in the 1950s and 1960s, Pastor Justin Lester of Congdon Street Baptist Church in Providence said. And King’s words are as relevant as ever, Lester said.
“That means racism has not ended,” Lester said. “That means we’re still screaming, ‘I’m a man.’ We’re still putting our hands up saying, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot,’ and this is the same situation where we learn that Black skin is still a threat to insecurity.”