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01/14/2006
Dr. Jessica June Davis to speak on "Keeping the Dream Alive" for MLK Day Jan. 13 /Christian Newswire/ -- Dr. Jessica June Davis is scheduled to speak on "Keeping the Dream Alive" at the NAACP Carbondale Branch Martin Luther King Breakfast on Monday, January 16, 2006. Dr. Davis is a senior administrator at Southern Illinois University School of Law. The following is an excerpt from her speech: ". . . In 1968, Michigan Congressman John Conyers
introduced legislation for a commemorative As I began to reflect on this general in my life story and the legacy he left for this generation and the generations to follow, I also began to think about another general in my life story, the Reverend Ida McNeil Davis, and the legacy she left as well. Ida McNeil Davis is my mother. On July 16, 1930, Linus and Nellie McNeil gave birth to my mother in Lillington, North Carolina. Because her father died prematurely and her mother had to work as a housekeeper to survive, my mother went to live with her grandfather, Marshall McNeil. Great-grandfather was a sharecropper. Yes, I am the great- granddaughter of a sharecropper. Let us never forget the struggle or we indeed will be destined to repeat it. For those of you who may not know what a sharecropper is. Let me help you. My great- grandfather did not receive his mule and forty acres of land. He lived on and harvested the land for another. Yes, my great-grandfather would never own that land. Sharecropper is another word for indentured servitude or slavery. My mother grew up in the segregated South. When she graduated from high school which was a great achievement at this point in history and in some of our urban and rural communities even today, she was offered a housekeeping job as her reward. An educated housekeeper in the 1940’s in the south was an invaluable commodity. My mother breached the visible and invisible social constraints of her time, and said, "No, I am moving north and going to college." She packed her one suitcase and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. She joined the migration of African Americans from the south to the north in pursuit of human dignity, human potential and social justice. The pursuits of these two great generals and others in my life story for human dignity, human potential, and social justice lead us to this moment in time. I am compelled by their pursuits and legacies to sound the shofar of justice and speak to America this morning. America will never be the America she so desires to be until she moves from keeping Dr. King’s dream alive to fulfilling the dream . . ."
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