“As we look at where we are…we must conclude that the rudder on our ship is still askew”, said Harry Belafonte yesterday to an audience of roughly 2000 Brooklynites who had gathered to celebrate not just the inauguration of President Obama but also Martin Luther King Day. And it was an especially meaningful event for many in the mainly African American crowd, for 150 years ago this month Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
People queued from 8am to get into the Howard Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music:
Two days before I’d seen John Cale perform there; now, the stage was filled by the gospel sounds of the Brooklyn Interdemonational Choir…here’s a little taster of how they sounded:
Harry Belafonte, the keynote speaker, recalled his last meeting with Martin Luther King in which the civil rights activist had been depressed by the way the country was headed.  “It is also today, a solemn day for me. Martin Luther King and I were the closest of friends. He came and asked me to serve for him as an advisor, as a strategist and as a companion in a journey that he had accepted for himself that troubled him.” Belafonte remembered that King had been worried the movement was integrating into “a burning house”. Asked what he should have activists do, he apparently replied “become firemen”. Moving to present-day politics, Belafonte said: “I hope that the president who takes the oath of office today will have the courage to say ‘I am the fireman.'”
