January 20, 1988

The Office of the President sponsored a program commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, featuring performances by the Vassar Gospel Choir and the Madrigal Singers, readings by the Ebony Theatre Ensemble, a screening of the 1987 documentary Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954–1964 and speeches by President Frances Fergusson and a former colleague of Dr. King’s, Reverend Samuel D. Proctor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

Proctor compared the civil rights struggles in the late 1950s and the late 1980s, concluding that focusing on a particular issue in the 1980s was difficult because “racism is endemic, systematic, amorphous and all over…not from a particular source.” Proctor also emphasized the need for education among African-Americans, saying “Black people must break into the un-black PhD field…They must be there when making decisions about our future… we can’t be overlooked.”

The Miscellany News