Martin Luther King III inducted into Rockland County Civil and Human Rights Hall of Fame
King brought a message of hope and unity, similar to those of his late father, but also brought warnings about education, gun violence and political polarization.
Rockland County welcomed a legend into the county's Civil and Human Rights Hall of Fame Monday morning.
Martin Luther King III received an honorary induction into the Hall of Fame.
He was joined by four local inductees.
King brought a message of hope and unity, similar to those of his late father, but also brought warnings about education, gun violence and political polarization.
He reminded educators and activists that when they teach about how the country was built, they must talk extensively about slavery.
"Two hundred and fifty years of free labor," King said to head nods and applause. "There are some in our nation now who are attempting to erase history, or at least to reframe it in a different way, revise it."
County Executive Ed Day said he wants the other four inductees to remember this day.
"We're going to solve our problems from within," he said. "Everybody has to be part of the problem-solving situation. It's something that needs to be said."
One of the local inductees, Liaison to the Chair of the Rockland County Legislature Vivian England has been mentoring a new crop of problem solvers, and promised not to stop.
"On behalf of the 65 other people who are already on that wall, I pledge my allegiance to equity," she said in her induction speach, "and I promise to be relentless in the fight."
King also challenged the inductees and others at the public event to look for new was to bring civility back into politics.
He said polarization is slowing social progress.
"It has created huge gulfs and divides that human kind will not be able to sustain itself if we don't make a correction," King said.
Other inductees this year included Nyack NAACP President Nikki Hines, Joseph Co, of the Rockland County Pride Center and Rockland Community College Holocaust Museum Executive Director Andrea Myer-Winograd.
