A call to carry on the work — and the dream — of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was made by local speakers this weekend during Bowling Green’s 16th annual tribute to the slain civil rights leader.

Friday’s program featured speaker James T. Jackson, multicultural advisor and coordinator of Diversity Education and Programs at the University, who posed a question to those in attendance: “Do we still dare to dream?”

Through this question Jackson hoped to challenge a general complacency that he feels has set into society, asking the three dozen people in attendance to pick up the ball of racial justice that King once carried and run with it.

“As we get further and further away from his life and death, I think at times those stories, those accomplishments get smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror,” Jackson said. “It’s only when we can really pay attention to and focus on what this man actually did — in basically a span of a decade — can we really understand why it’s important for us to have programs like this.”

During his speech, Jackson referenced his own experiences learning about King during his youth in Philadelphia, Pa. There, children in his elementary school learned of King once a year through posters and handouts. They were taught that King was a good man who did good things for black people, until he was shot on a balcony, Jackson said.

So Jackson’s generation, and most likely those that followed, were robbed by their parents, teacher’s, clergy and institutions of a true and earnest understanding of why King was so important to America, he said.

“Few people have taken the time to make Dr. King relevant to a technologically sound, fastpaced, me-first world that exists today,” Jackson said. “I shudder to think how Dr. King’s life and legacy is being presented in schools all around this state and in this country.”

There is hope, Jackson assured, but the solution is not an easy one.

King’s life and legacy can be preserved if people will adopt the mindset with which Jackson categorizes King’s actions: That of right and risk, he said.

“How many of us have acted — or not acted — out of the fear of risk?” Jackson said. “How many of us have not stood up for what was right because we stood to lose something in the process?”

Calling on quotations from King throughout the speech, Jackson concluded the day with one of the civil rights leader’s most famous statements: The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.

“Where do you stand in times of controversy and challenge?” Jackson said. “Ask yourself that question as Dr. King did.”

Sunday’s program featured Pastor Duane Tisdale of Friendship Baptist Church in Toledo, who took the vision of King that Jackson highlighted days earlier and challenged the congregation at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church to make it happen on a local level.

Calling on King’s civil rights work in the 1950s and 60s, Tisdale pointed out the fact that King never strayed far from his Southern home when working toward racial equality.

“The reason he started in Selma [Ala.], the reason he went to Atlanta and Memphis is because that was his backyard,” Tisdale said.

As he made his way down I-75 Sunday evening on his way to Bowling Green, Tisdale saw numerous flags and bumper stickers proclaiming “God Bless” and “I Love America.” Tisdale had to question whether or not people should really say that when they’re allowing fellow Americans to suffer through homelessness and hunger.

“How can I say I love America and watch folk right here go without?” Tisdale said.

Early on in his sermon, Tisdale asked those in attendance to “break free from the boundaries” they’ve set by closing the large gaps between themselves and a stranger, and going to sit right next to someone they’ve never met. Everyone in the church rose up and joined a stranger for the remainder of the sermon, providing Tisdale with a real-time, real-life example of the equality that he believes King was trying to bring to the American people.

“Equality is when I recognize your worth as an individual,” Tisdale said. “When I get up tomorrow and see folks that don’t look like me, it doesn’t mean they don’t have the same quality that I have.”

While the attendance at both programs was encouraging, Mayor John Quinn hopes that future King tributes in the city will bring out a higher number of Bowling Green’s citizens.

“We would like to see more community members attend these sessions every year,” Quinn said. “We think it’s important for them to hear these words. We are trying to make this an event that’s not just to remember Dr. King once a year, but to make people aware of his legacy in an ongoing way, and hopefully carry it on.”