‘This far by faith’: MLK breakfast speaker calls for people to embrace church roots as King did

He great-granddaughter of South Carolina slaves called for African-Americans and others to return to the Christian church roots of the civil rights movement that formed the foundation of the fight for racial justice in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Rev. Jane Sims, co-founder and co-pastor of the local Calvary Community Church, made her plea at the rescheduled 25th Annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day Breakfast Saturday morning at The Commons in downtown Columbus before about 120 people in person plus a livestream audience.

Sims’ remarks were part of a two-hour-plus program that unfolded as part revival, part social justice rally — fitting because the organizing and local African American Pastors Alliance has been a big part of both in the community. Civil rights leader King, killed in 1968, was a pastor who also leveraged the impact of groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the push for equality for African Americans and others.

Sims, a well-known, outspoken, keynote orator at such events over the past 30 years or more, remembered that, when she was 5, her family drove to Woodruff, South Carolina, to meet her blind, 100-year-old great grandmother, born into slavery.

They stayed at her house with no plumbing. And it was a given that everyone would attend a sawdust-floor church service on Sunday morning after an old-fashioned, washtub bath.

“Singing, rejoicing — this is our heritage,” Sims said to crowd applause. “This where we’ve come from. We’ve come this far leaning on the Lord.

“It gave people (years ago) the strength to go through everything they went through. And it will give us the strength to go through things today.”

Singing and rejoicing formed a large part of the gathering that was rescheduled because omicron variant levels reached their peak locally around Jan. 17 on the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. national holiday. So organizers wove the rescheduling into being a part of February’s Black History Month.

A live musical ensemble formed from several churches joined a seven-member choir for rousing selections such as “This Is the Day That The Lord Has Made.”

Some numbers drew a standing ovation.

Sims focused with sadness on one other concern: that racial progress she witnessed over decades seems to have regressed in a society where young Black men especially are targets of police shootings.

Mayor Jim Lienhoop, who often has deftly mixed current events with historical ones at such programs, was part of a lineup of other speakers on the program. He, too, acknowledged the race-oriented tensions nationwide of the past several years.

“Today’s times are certainly contentious,” Lienhoop said. “But the 1960s were also contentious times. And frankly, I’m old enough to remember them.”

He mentioned the adversity of living through Jim Crowe laws and other obstacles designed to limit the voting and civil rights of Blacks.

“Dr. King’s challenge as a civil rights leader was to navigate through and around those difficult challenges while maintaining faith in his dream for his children while remaining true to his methods of Gandhian nonviolence in Christian love,” Lienhoop said.

Other speakers highlighted the modern challenges to Black residents. Jackie Fischer, vice chancellor for academic affairs at Ivy Tech Community College, highlighted statewide Ivy Tech stats showing, for instance, that first-year Black students have less than a 1 percent chance of remaining in school if they fail a course in their first semester.

“If this doesn’t lay out the work we have ahead of us …” Fischer said, her voice trailing off.