DuPage residents celebrate King with inclusive service

Monday's gathering at Wheaton College was just as Martin Luther King Jr. would have wanted it, DuPage African Methodist Episcopal Church Pastor Rev. James F. Miller said.

"This is an inclusive service, as Dr. King would have liked it to be," he told the crowd inside Edman Memorial Chapel.

"Live the Dream," the 20th annual celebration of King's birthday in DuPage County, attracted hundreds of area residents of all races, ages and faiths. The program also included speeches and invocations by leaders from local congregations, including Rev. Tracy Malone, senior pastor of Gary United Methodist Church in Wheaton; Tasneem Osmani of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago and Rabbi Marc Rudolph of Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville.

All speakers drove home the message that King's vision must be remembered in modern times so it continues to inspire social change.

"We are the keepers and the doers of his unfinished agenda," Malone said. "King's dream is ours to embrace and to keep alive."

The program also was punctuated with gospel music performances by the Wheaton College Gospel Choir and the DuPage AME Mass Choir, which kept the audience clapping, singing and on its feet.

In addition, organizers awarded scholarships to 12 students from high schools throughout DuPage County, who were chosen for embodying King's spirit of social justice.

The keynote address was delivered by Bishop John Richard Bryant, senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Bryant, named one of Ebony magazine's 100 Most Influential Black Americans, shared memories of standing on Capitol Hill in 1963 for King's "I Have a Dream Speech," and then 45 years later in Denver for Barack Obama's presidential nomination acceptance speech in 2008.

The lesson he learned from both historical moments, he said, is hope springs eternal and is bigger than both King and Obama. He joked about hope being like a plague that will continue for generations.

"Hope is a communicable disease," Bryant said. "When it breaks out, it spreads. And Martin was so contaminated and saturated with hope that it hung around 45 years until someone else was so saturated and started yelling 'Yes we can.'"