Fairfax County School Board member Pat Hynes, Hunter Mill District Supervisor Cathy Hudgins and U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-11) speak at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebration at Reston Community Center. Photo by Reena Singh.
Reston Community Center is keeping the dream alive.
RCC’s annual Hunters Woods luncheon program to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and analyze current issues in racism was held on Monday, Jan. 20, with keynote speaker Anna Deavere Smith’s series of monologues showing Restonians how Americans have reclaimed grace in the face of adversity.
“It is an incredible honor to be in a community with a vision like this,” said Smith. “There is this idea that we can all be together in a healthy way - like you do in Reston. That’s how we keep Dr. King’s dream alive.”
Smith uses a singular brand of theater to voice - utterance for utterance - monologues she recorded from more than 1,000 Americans that range a variety of topics. For her performance Monday, she focused on the monologues that show how the speakers reclaimed themselves despite the odds.
She claimed that racism is more complicated today than when segregation was being battled in the 1960s.
“Now we have a different situation today,” she said.
One powerful monologue depicts a freshman at Stanford University that remembered losing almost all of her family members during the genocides in Rwanda in a story about two tribes who pitted themselves against each other in the deadliest way. Another depicts Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of the first two African-Americans enrolled at the University of Georgia, during the riots that followed desegregation.
Her last speech, however, came from Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
“Some people think that the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech was his best work,” said Smith.
She noted that the current education system has a long way to go to lessen the gap between the wealthy and the economically disadvantaged.
Fairfax County School Board member Pat Hynes - Hunter Mill - spoke at the lunch about this issue.
“We are a segregated county,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is doing this on purpose.”
She continued, noting that the poorest areas in the county are those that, historically, have been separated for African-American residents. However, she said education is the best way to pull families out of intergenerational poverty.
“In education, there is hope,” she said.
Hunter Mill District Supervisor Cathy Hudgins said the county has made progress but also recognizes the inequities that exist.
“It’s in the school system, it’s in the number of students not diverted from the justice system,” she said. “It’s in the poverty we have.”
Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova talked about her youth during the days Dr. King was starting to make waves. She said before he started making white residents “uncomfortable,” she was completely unaware of the community of black residents just down the street from her.
“Is the world a better place than when Dr. Martin Luther King was alive?” she asked. “Absolutely.”
However, she said her greatest fear would be the day the Board of Supervisors stops “pedaling,” stops moving forward and trying to right wrongs.
U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-11) said that Dr. King risked everything for his cause.
“He had the moral clarity to understand you cannot silence yourself against a system that is evil,” he said.