To honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., the Lomax AME Zion Church in the Nauck neighborhood opened its doors to the hungry and the homeless Monday to host a special soup kitchen.
“King really spent his life and sacrificed his life to empower people,” said Lawrence Guyot, an activist who helped carry the banner of equal rights during the 1960’s in one of the nation’s most volatile cities, Greenwood, Miss.
Guyot, who knew King personally before his assassination, spoke to the more than 70 guests who passed through the kitchen’s doors on Monday, Jan. 17.
The meal was spaghetti and meatballs but the message behind it was one of community, compassion and reverence for the man who spearheaded America’s civil rights movement. Empowerment, Guyot said, is a message that black people in America should take to heart. Political empowerment, he added, is the most vital.
“If you look at the Bible, it tells you that you should seek to feed the hungry, care for the poor and clothe the naked,” he said. “You can’t do that in this age without becoming involved in the political arena.”
INSPIRED BY KING, Guyot continues to be active in politics, taking his message to youth through documentaries and an initiative aimed at bringing more of the civil rights movement into America’s classrooms.
“If you’re old enough to be oppressed, you’re old enough to fight oppression,” he said.
Sponsored by the Arlington Community Action Program (A-CAP), a civic group with its own goals of empowering Arlington’s poor, and with the help of the Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network (A-SPAN), the soup kitchen remained open for three hours.
THE SETTING WAS IDEAL, according to pastor Gary Burns, because of the church’s link to King’s now famous “I have a dream” speech. Activists traveling with King spent the night prior to their march on Washington DC inside Lomax AME. Burns has his own memories of racial inequality, memories he shared with the congregation.
“I remember a time when I couldn’t go to the beach because of my color,” he said. “Even though we lived near Virginia Beach, we had to go North to Delaware to spend a day near the ocean. Now, because of Dr. King, we can go there, even own our time shares and that kind of thing.”
FEEDING THE HUNGRY is part of the church’s regular ministry, but Monday’s meal was something special. In the kitchen, volunteer Jean Wright and her fellow chefs began cooking early in the morning to prepare.
The soup kitchen also hosted students from Gunston and Kenmore middle schools who are learning English as a second language.
The lesson, said A-CAP community development director Dana Lewis, was to draw comparisons between King and social revolutionaries in their home countries, but teaching individual empowerment to young people was the real goal — one that Lewis said youths are learning faster than ever thanks to modern media culture.
“Look at how the hip-hop generation succeeded in organizing people to vote in the last election,” she said.
And that kind of empowerment, Guyot said, comes from personal pride and self-respect.
“If you’re sweeping streets, be the best sweeper there is,” he said. “If you’re cleaning houses, be the best at that. There is a universal imperative to do that.”