Senator Jeanne Shaheen spoke about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the New Boston Community Church on January 15, 2023. She spoke of her determination as Governor to get his birthday recognized as an official New Hampshire State Holiday. Senator Shaheen was introduced by Reverend Robert Woodland.
Some of Senator Shaheen’s Remarks
“Dr. King’s contributions cannot be overstated. His unwavering fight for civil rights, justice and full equality under the law for Black Americans stirred the consciousness of our nation to address systemic racism, forever changing the trajectory of our country. On what would have been his 94th birthday, and 55 years since he was taken from us, it is on all of us to finish what he started – to build a more inclusive society and fight for full equality under the law,” said Shaheen. “I remember when I first really felt that pull toward action. I was teaching at a recently integrated school in Mississippi and was listening to then-Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter’s inaugural address about the need to end segregation in the South. I was inspired by the change I could feel in our country, which was started by Dr. King, and I wanted to be a part of it.”
She continued, “It’s been more than five decades since Dr. King delivered his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, and unfortunately too many Americans continue to face the barriers Dr. King built a movement to tear down. All of us have a role to play in carrying the mantle of racial justice forward to fully realize Dr. King’s vision. Today is an important day for reflection, but more importantly, we have a moral imperative to take action to create the more just society that Dr. King dreamed for us.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen – Congressional Record
New Boston Community Church Choir
The New Boston Community Choir chose the song Lift Every Voice and Sing for the service. This song was promoted as the “Negro National Anthem” by the NAACP in 1917.
Lift Every Voice and Sing
A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercises. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us, and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children.
Poetry Foundation
Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved away from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it; they went off to other schools and sang it; they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used.
The lines of this song repay me in an elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children.
We Shall Overcome
The service concluded with the choir and congregation singing We Shall Overcome.
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