For Martin-Infinite Hope

Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed.

US Cities were ablaze as rioters expressed their outrage

and I was sitting in church with my brother, Chuck.

It was Palm Sunday. The priest was asking people to go to Newark

for a "Walk for Understanding".

Newark, my father's home town, had had its own riots the year before.

Growing up in a town that bordered Newark, I can still recall the reddish

glow in the sky as the city burned. There was fear that Newark would once

again erupt into violence but on that Sunday morning it had yet to do so.

My brother turned to me and said "We should go."

And so we did.

Ironically the event had been planned much earlier for Palm Sunday of that year.

No one could have foreseen the urgent necessity this event would manifest.

In the Montclair State student newspaper was this small announcment:

"In concern for the conditions existing in Newark and other urban areas

throughout the country, a walk through last summer’s riot area

in Newark has been planned for Palm Sunday, April 7.

Participants will assemble at the Newark Courthouse"("Newark March" The Montclarion

3/29/1968)

In an article for NJ.com entitled, "Crossroads Pt. 3: After the riots, change is slow to come"

7/10/07 by Brad Parks it states:

"The event had already been scheduled by Newark's Queen of Angels Church weeks earlier

as a chance for suburban whites to show an interest in the long-neglected city.

It was immediately recast as a tribute to the murdered civil rights leader,

and the attendance nearly tripled organizers' expectations."

The article goes on to say,

"The effort began in the hours immediately following King's death,

as talk of rioting reverberated around a nervous city.

Police Director Dominick Spina convened an emergency meeting

between black and white community leaders,

men like radical playwright Amiri Baraka (the former LeRoi Jones)

and North Ward vigilante patrol boss Tony Imperiale, men who had never before shared a

room. The results surprised everyone.

'It was kind of strained at the beginning,' Spina told The Star-Ledger at the time.

'At the end we were all calling each other by first names.'

It was a lovely early spring day.

People had come from church earlier in the day and many were still

in their Sunday best. We were waving palm fronds and singing "We Shall Overcome".

There was a lovely feeling of unity and peace but people were still scanning

the rooftops of the burned out buildings and though unspoken,

the word "sniper" ran through my mind.

"They were the first marchers to reach the corner of Springfield Avenue and Bergen Street,

and they did so side by side. Hugh Addonizio, Newark's embattled mayor,

and Willie Wright, president of the United Afro-American Association,

were leaders who had seldom found a commonality of purpose until that day.

What followed them was no less remarkable:

a column of humanity - part white, part black - stretching through the ghettos of Newark

for a mile and a half. Estimates put the crowd at 25,000. It took 45 minutes for the marchers,

moving 10 abreast, to file through the intersection of Springfield and Bergen."

("Crossroads Pt. 3: "After the riots, change is slow to come" 7/10/07 by Brad Parks NJ.com)

"The Newark Evening News reported that, for the first time since the riots,

a 'new feeling of hope' pervaded the city.

'It has been proven in the last few days that black people and white people

can get together,' Wright declared.

'It's magnificent,' said Albert Black, executive director of the Human Rights Commission.

And then - with unknowing prescience - he added, 'If something comes of it.'

For Springfield and Bergen, the unvarnished truth was this: Nothing really did."

("Crossroads Pt. 3: "After the riots, change is slow to come" 7/10/07 by Brad Parks NJ.com)

Palm Sunday represents hope.

As Jesus entered Jerusalem people waved palm fronds to celebrate

the hope, and joy that he represented to them.

On Palm Sunday 1968 people waved palms in hopes

for peace and a better future free of racial strife.

Hope is not a guarantee of better things

but to be hopeless is to surrender to the

idea that there can never be better things.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must accept finite disappointment,

but never lose infinite hope”