Skip to content

Oakland Celebrates the Dream of MLK

on January 19, 2009

By ANNA BLOOM

At Thursday’s opening ceremony for “Oakland Celebrates the Dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,” leaders reached for the wisdom of King to weave together the
tragic and auspicious first month of 2009.

The ceremony was held the afternoon following the second of two citywide protests over the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III on Jan. 1 at the Fruitvale BART station.

Newspapers led the day’s paper’s with the story that the former BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle, was charged with killing Grant, who, at the time of his killing, had been unarmed and handcuffed. As speakers took the podium in front of Oakland’s City Hall, vandalism, flyers and a decorated memorial in Grant’s name marked
the city’s streets.

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Oakland City Councilwoman Jean Quan and the event’s keynote speaker Angela Glover Blackwell, looked forward to next week. King would find much to celebrate, they reminded their audience: Following King’s 80th birthday this Monday, the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first black president-elect in United
States’ history, is slated for Tuesday, Jan. 20.

For a complete schedule of Martin Luther King, Jr. events throughout Oakland, visit http://oaklandnet.com/celebrations/

Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.

Photo by Basil D Soufi
logo
Oakland North

Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.

Latest Posts

Scroll To Top