Peace, Passion and Poetry on Hastings MLK Day
By Merlin Betts
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.” Martin Luther King Jr, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964.
Nestled on Market Street, between Grand Parade and Norman Road, is Greenhalf Art Studio, the venue for this year’s Martin Luther King Day. Hastings MLK Day started as a house party hosted by local legend Claudine Eccleston. Ten years on, the celebration remains as popular as ever, despite – or perhaps because of – pandemic lockdowns and the apocalyptic mood of national politics. And Claudine remains its charismatic, powerful host.
She recalls, “I started doing the event when I lived in San Francisco in the early eighties. As far as I’m aware, there were no celebrations in the town, so I started it in my little shop, Rimes of Fashion & Accessories, with help from our working group of mainly artists on another project, the Reggae Calendar. It grew so large that the last one we organised drew over 1200 people.
“MLK day is a day of service, not just about a boogie. This is the part of my service in a time that’s fraught with depression, repression and the emotional enslavement of people. I continued to celebrate this event but it outgrew our living room. Plus it needed to be in a more neutral space that could welcome and accommodate more people. Previous Hastings MLK Days have been supported by Bob Tipler and Adam Daly of the Albion and given space by the Refugee Buddy Project.”
New Peaks of Hope
Dr Martin Luther King Jr has always been an inspiring, even essential figure for the depressed, downtrodden and misrepresented. He’s perhaps best recalled in his own words, and the community and understanding he inspires in others.
“With patient and firm determination we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every mountain of pride and irrationality is made low by the levelling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom.”
Sunday 15 January saw a variety of open mic performances, from personal notes, through poetry and song, to theatre and music, each reflecting on the great man’s works and their relevance to our times.
Between turns on the microphone, the studio space – feeling like a village hall – might be filled with discussion, with the remaining chorus of the last song of celebration and protest sung, or with the clink of glasses as people fill up at the trestle table bar. The energy in the room was never allowed to dissipate, even with people coming and going through the sometimes-confined space, and a few observers feverishly sketching or writing. Claudine showed a perfect understanding of the crowd – she made the day feel like a house party, a revolutionary rally and a sermon with hymns, all at once, definitely channelling the birthday boy’s positive energy.
Needs More Than a Month
Speakers included local artist and writer Linford Anderson from the National Windrush Museum, a British organisation set up ‘to research, preserve and promote the cultural heritage of Windrush pioneers, their antecedents and successors’.
The Museum’s curators explain: “The ancient African proverb ‘when an old man dies, a library burns to the ground,’ is an example of how much we revere repositories of knowledge. While some aspects of our histories have fallen victim to the passage of time, technology has afforded us new ways to hold onto our stories. Through these new avenues, the concept of what it means to be who we are has been redefined, reflecting a vibrant and interconnected ecosystem across the diaspora.
“Outside of the annual Black History Month, most British museums do not represent the history or culture of British Windrush settlers despite the considerable impact Windrush communities have in Britain. Now Black Lives Matter, the Windrush Scandal and decolonisation debates have surfaced, the significant gaps and historical erasure in Britain’s collective memory of Windrush pioneers, narratives and expressions, could not be clearer.
“A National Windrush Museum is needed to collect and preserve the stories of these British settlers in our nation and their children. Such a museum will be a lasting monument that gives permanence to their legacies. It will honour their struggles and successes.”
Before a reading of the poem Kings we were reminded of the often forgotten West Indian contribution to Britain’s efforts in WW2, highlighted in recent research by Angelina Osbourne and Arthur Torrington.
No Rugged Individualism for the Poor
Surrinder Chea, who works for our local Health in Mind, read extracts from Dr King’s 1968 “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, reminding us that the power of collective action, and the way it can be inclusive of individual needs and goals, must not be ignored and forgotten. Even massed boycotting of certain products – just a small thing for each individual doing it – can have a huge effect. In other words, ‘don’t buy Coca-Cola in Memphis’. Dr Martin Luther King Jr:
“We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favourite, favourite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.”
The point was well made with us being carried straight into a sing-song run by Lifted Up Community Choir that got everyone jumping up out of their seats. After a slow start and some welcome guidance, the whole room was singing along. Lifted Up held a workshop at the DLWP on Saturday 14 to launch their new Youth Choir, free to all and welcoming under-16s into the vocal community.
When’s That Change Arriving?
After a pause for drinks and access to loos, performances renewed with actor Marie Helene doing a one-woman piece she wrote for the occasion. It began sombre, with a lone figure placing protest placards like tombstones, reading out the names of those unlawfully killed. Utterly dispirited, our subject rings the operator and asks to be put through to Dr Martin Luther King Jr. After clarification that she’s not looking for his father, Martin Luther King Sr, who renamed himself and his son after Protestant reformer Martin Luther, the call makes it through without fanfare, as though it was the most normal thing in the world.
A monologue/dialogue begins giving a potted history of the man’s work. Helene’s piece was playful and informative, and much appreciated by the audience. But she also mentioned a note of doubt that was acknowledged by the disembodied Dr and was picked up by vocal talent Veenus London as she performed A Change is Gonna Come.
She said, and the room agreed, “things haven’t progressed as much as the good Doctor might’ve wanted”. After a standing ovation for her singing, there was some reassurance “it’s been a long, long, long time coming… but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”
Easing away from the speeches and towards the close of the day, the music continued. While Sister Suzie was unwell and couldn’t attend, we had excellent guitar playing from Mick Knight in the style of the Reverend Davis, also known as Blind Gary Davis. This was followed by a set from local Reggae Royalty (see You Know Me on our website), Henry Matic. Prosecco flowed and carried us away into the bits of the evening that can’t be written about (because I stopped taking notes and kept on drinking).
This year’s MLK Day was supported by Home Live Art and Playing the Race Card, and you may recognise Greenhalf Art Studio as hosting their latest exhibition. Find out more about them at: www.playingtheracecard.co.uk
The running order:
- Linford Anderson, @linfordanderson on Instagram
- Surrinder Chera, @surinderchera on Facebook
- Sabina Arthur, @sabinas_pics Instagram
- Mick Knight, Sister Suzie’s guitarist
- Marie Helene, @marie_helene_000 on Instagram
- Day Lavale, LUCC Lifted up Community Choir
- Violet, @veenuslondon on Instagram
- Henry Matic, @henry_matic_tenyue_officially on Instagram
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