wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Stepping closer to the dream

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This story and photos available online:

www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09036<http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2009/09036

>Stepping closer to the dream

Presbyterians walk for justice on Martin Luther King's
birthday

>by Jerry L. Van Marter
>Presbyterian News Service

LOUISVILLE ― A hardy band of about 75 Presbyterian Center
employees and others from around town braved near-zero
temperatures today (Jan. 15) for a "Justice Walk" to
commemorate the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The three-mile trek took the marchers from the Presbyterian
Center to seven historic sites in Louisville's own
checkered racial history and concluded at the historic
Presbyterian Community Center in the city's predominantly
African-American Smoketown neighborhood.

At each stop along the three-hour journey, marchers paused
for song, prayers of confession and intercession and
readings reflecting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s
commitment to justice and equality.

Those who were unable to make the walk gathered for a
worship service in the Presbyterian Center chapel.

"Today we walk and worship as a sign of solidarity with
persons in the Louisville community and around the world
who are deprived of justice. We walk for children and for
all human rights," walkers declared in a litany before the
walk started at 1:00 p.m., Eastern Time. "We walk for
self-determination, education and interracial
collaboration. We walk against human trafficking and unjust
public policy.

"Let us also walk for fair immigration policies, equal
employment opportunities and women's advocacy," they
continued. "Let us walk and worship because our lives begin
to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
For whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I
can never be what I ought to be until you are what you
ought to be. According to Dr. King, this is the
interrelated structure of reality."

The first stop on the walk route was barely a block from
the Presbyterian Center ― the site of the Garrison Slave
Pen, Louisville's most notorious slave market in the early-
to mid-1800s.

Other stops included historic African American churches ―
including Second African Baptist Church, where King led a
voting rights rally in 1967 ―  the sites of two other slave
markets, and Sheppard Square, named after the Rev. William
H. Sheppard, a Presbyterian missionary to the Belgian Congo
from 1890-1910.

Sheppard denounced the Belgian colonists' cruelty in the
Congo and upon returning to the U.S. served as pastor of
Grace Presbyterian Church in Smoketown from 1912 until his
death in 1927.

Fourteen community groups dedicated to promoting racial
justice in Louisville participated in organizing the
Justice Walk, along with a planning committee of
Presbyterian Center employees. The marchers were sent on
their way by David Tandy, president of Louisville's Board
of Aldermen (city council).

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