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Nucleus Johnson kicks off parade with MLK speech
Dallas Morning News - 07:50 PM CST on Monday, January 18, 2010(This young man blessed us at the Booker T. Washington Alumni Association President's Breakfast in December. Thank you Mary Bennett!)
By JESSICA MEYERS / The Dallas Morning News jmeyers@dallasnews.com Nucleus Johnson has memorized the cadence, nostril flares and guttural groans of every Rev. Martin Luther King speech. But don’t expect to hear him talk of dreams. The 22-year-old stirs rooms with his renditions and has performed for the King family on special invitation, but refuses to recite King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. Johnson, whose oration helped kick-off the Martin Luther King Day parade in Dallas on Monday, sees a growing disassociation with the slain civil rights leader among young people. He calls attention to a generation further removed from segregated schools and a society more disposed to selective memory sound bites. He honors King, who would have turned 81 Friday, by reviving what he says others’ often forget. “He’s been named the conscious of America and that’s really set with me,” said Johnson, an Oak Cliff native and student at Mountain View College. “He’s left a great legacy behind but unfortunately too many young people these days don’t hold onto that legacy.” Close to a hundred people — including the mayor, district attorney and several former local sports stars — sat at makeshift breakfast tables in Fair Park on Monday morning and listened to Johnson recite an excerpt from “Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool.” The speech brought tears to middle-aged men and elderly women thronged Johnson after he finished. A handful of teenagers listened. The Rev. Fredrick Haynes III, the nationally known senior pastor at Friendship-West Baptist Church, said that the disconnect concerning King began years ago. “Our generation spent so much time trivializing what he was really about that [young people] have no sense,” Haynes said. “We have lost sight of the fact that he died organizing poor people’s campaigns. “I find it ironic, almost poetic, that this whole Haiti crisis happened days before the celebration,” Haynes added. “If Dr. King were alive his energy would have gone not only to addressing the crisis caused by the earthquake but before the earthquake.” Those who remember King have allowed parades and banquets to replace marches and relief efforts, he said. “We have these wonderful social events but do nothing when the event is over.” Like other leaders whose image grows into idolatry, King has always been misremembered, said James SoRelle, a professor of history at Baylor University. “For a lot of people King the Peacemaker in the sense of race relations is more comfortable than someone like Malcolm X,” he said. “But there are similarities between the two that gets lost in the shuffle.” In the years leading up to his assassination in 1968, King focused much more intensely on economic dislocation, social democracy and the war in Vietnam, SoRelle said. The “I Have a Dream speech “is a symbolic snapshot but it isn’t the whole person.” That’s the message Johnson heard from his father, who has recordings of almost every King speech but that one. Johnson started entering oratorical contests in kindergarten. When he was 7, he recited his first King sermon for an audience. “He was crying and then we started crying,” said his father, Johnny Johnson, as he waited for him to perform on Monday. He said he knew others would gravitate toward his son, hence his name. Johnson still gets butterflies when he speaks. His dad still cries. Johnson wiped his face as he walked away from the microphone Monday. His jaw loosened after several minutes, his tailored suit contrasting a boyish grin. “Somebody has to remind our youth where they come from and how they got where they are today,” Johnson said, his voice starting to tremble much like King’s often did. “It sounds cliché but if not me, then who? If not now, then when?”
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