This story was originally reported by Ebony JJ Curry by The 19thand republished through Rewire News Group’s partnership with The 19th News Network.
Detroit was the first place where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. an early version featured what would become his “I Have a Dream” speech. He recited it on June 23, 1963at the end of Detroit’s Walk to Freedom, a march that took place weeks before he spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
This piece of Detroit history highlights what Martin Luther King Jr. Day of the city asks. It’s harder to treat the holiday, celebrated on Monday, as a slogan when the dream was first spoken aloud in Detroit. It’s also harder to see it as a day off when many people choose to mark it as a day off every year.
The Lambda Pi Omega (LPO) chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, is one of several Detroit institutions built around that belief.
Their members measure the weeks before Martin Luther King Jr. Day during childbirth. They’re putting together toiletries for Detroit residents without stable housing, volunteering their time to youth programs aimed at fighting hunger and promoting leadership skills, and stepping into gaps that families already face, such as hunger and lack of resources. Crystal Sewell, the chapter’s president, said the work is rooted in service that doesn’t just happen once a year.
“Our work is really about uplifting our community; that’s really at the core of what we do,” Sewell said. “It is sisterhood and service for the betterment of our local community that is truly the essence and spirit of our chapter.”
This year, LPO Martin Luther King Jr. Spending the day at Third New Hope Baptist Church on Detroit’s west side for the annual “We Are One” or Day of Service. Members of the fraternity plan to collect 1,908 toiletry bags for Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, a local nonprofit that provides emergency shelter and support services, including housing programs for families and people working in recovery. The specificity in the number of kits is intentional: 1,908 reflects AKA’s founding year, 1908. After the event, the bags will be delivered to the Rescue Mission’s family shelters and recovery homes.
The chapter’s service calendar remains full year-round, Sewell said.
“If I add it all up, I would say we participate in at least 10 volunteer activities a month,” she said. “So you’re talking about 100 to 150 volunteer opportunities per year. Several hours go into our volunteer work, more than 2,000 hours per year.”
LPO is part of the Divine Nine – nine historically black fraternities and sororities under the National Panhellenic Council, founded when black students, excluded from white Greek systems, formed their own organizations around scholarship, leadership and service.
Dr. King was part of that tradition.
He was initiated into Boston’s Sigma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha in June 1952. Alpha Phi Alpha (APA) was founded in 1906 as the first black Greek-letter fraternity; AKA is the first black student association with Greek letters.
AKA’s purpose statement includes a guideline that members repeat as a standard: “to serve all humanity.”
Jacqueline Newman has lived by that for decades. She became an AKA member at Wayne State University in 1970. When the LPO chapter of the fraternity was chartered in Detroit in 1977, she became a founding member. She now serves as chapter historian.
“What we’re doing is trying to help in any way we can, wherever we can,” Newman said. “We love children, so we’re in different schools to help feed students. We’ve clothed students. We’ve given Thanksgiving baskets. We’ve given scholarships, and it wasn’t just to women or girls. It was for men too. And no matter your race. That’s what I consider service to all humanity, to all people who are in need. That’s what we do.”
Newman’s own timeline begins in the South. She was 13 and living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, when Dr. King spoke in Detroit in 1963.
“I was part of the South that he tried to liberate from civil rights injustice,” she said.
She moved to Detroit with her family in 1965. “My mom and dad were teachers and the employment opportunities were better here in Detroit,” Newman said. Her mother became a member of AKA in 1962; Newman described her own membership as a legacy. “So it was mainly a legacy for me. I followed in my mother’s footsteps.”
Her service record began before she joined AKA. In the South, she said, “I saw so many injustices done, especially to our people. I marched and did civil rights things when I was 11, 12, 13 years old before I came here to Michigan.”
Those experiences forced her to take action: “You don’t want anyone else to have to go through what you went through,” Newman said.
“When you’ve seen a man hanging from a tree, it hits you a little bit more,” Newman said. “Once you’ve experienced it, it’s different.”
Detroit remembers Dr.’s dream speech. King because it heard this one early. Lambda Pi Omega is focusing its Martin Luther King Jr. Day on a simpler goal: what gets done, who gets served and whether work will continue after the holidays are over.
As Sewell said, service delivery is about immediate support and long-term social work.
“For me, service is about uplifting others within our community who are in greatest need,” she said. “It advocates for social justice and ensures our community is informed, educated and registered to vote and vote, thinking about the whole individual, from the cradle to the senior.”
#Detroit #hear #Kings #dream #black #women #carrying