NEWBERRY — In observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Day Jr. Day, dozens of people participated in a ceremonial march from Bethlehem Baptist Church to Miller Chapel AME Church on a frosty Monday morning.
Directly following the march was a celebration attended by hundreds featuring a wide array of speakers and musical performances from choirs including the New Enoree Mass Choir, United Voices and Jeffery Lampkin & the Frances Marion Choir.
The keynote address was delivered by Newberry’s own Dr. Pamela Scott-Johnson, who graduated with honors from Newberry High School in 1978.
She went on to receive her B.A. in psychology from Spelman College in Atlanta and a Ph.D in neuroscience from Princeton University.
Johnson currently serves as the interim dean for Morgan State University’s College of Liberal Arts in Baltimore in addition to being a full professor in the psychology department.
Although she has traveled the world she still considers Newberry her home and everyone in the community her family, she said.
“I thank you for what you are to me and I may never have the opportunity to thank you individually for what you’ve done,” Scott-Johnson said. “Today is Martin Luther King celebration and remembrance. A man who stood on the mountaintop and imagined a time that did not exist when he existed.”
Scott-Johnson borrowed the format of the opening passage of A Tale of Two Cities to relay her experience as a young girl in a newly desegregated Newberry school system.
“It was the worst of times in that as a six-year-old young black girl you had to play by yourself but it was the best of times because you were moving into a world yet to be unveiled,” she said. “It was the worst of times in that my father had to worry about our safety, it was the best of times when my mother said, ‘It doesn’t matter, this isn’t the whole world, there is more to come.’”
More would indeed come for Scott-Johnson as evidenced by her two post-secondary degrees from Princeton University in the 1980’s.
“Have we come a long way? Of course we have. When I think of the achievements of many sitting in this room, indeed we have,” she said.
The crux of her message lay in the notion that, while they have come a long way, African Americans need to continue striving to enact positive changes in the community.
“The race is not over, not by a long shot, but it is our narrative to claim. Others have written the narrative for us and it shouldn’t be that way,” Scott-Johnson said. “I mean, who’s going to tell your story better than you?”