I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Jan. 16, 1997
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 68 years old Wednesday had he not been shot to death in 1968. However, according to Linda Baer, Bemidji State University senior vice president for academic and student affairs, when he died, his agenda did not die with him.
That was the message Baer told a large crowd of BSU students, faculty and staff, Bemidji Middle School sixth-graders and community residents who filled BSU's Beaux Arts Ballroom Wednesday.
She was the keynote speaker at the 12th annual Martin Luther King Commemoration sponsored by the Campus Ministry Association.
In a ceremony sparked by spiritual music sung by Middle School sixth-graders and the BSU choir, Baer and other speakers celebrated King's life and writings, but mostly his "unfinished agenda."
Baer said King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech was the message of his agenda, and his agenda was to communicate God's message of a "Promised Land" to God's people.
King wanted to call America back to its roots because it had gotten lost, she said. And the Civil Rights Movement was a "collective effort to reduce the gap between the nation's ideals and its practices, and restore America to its original dream, a dream steeped in the themes of democracy."
However much he did succeed in his vision of a better future, Baer said, he succeeded in only part of his task. He may have won the legal battle for civil rights, but he never rid the nation of racial prejudices, never abolished poverty and never forced the nation to undertake certain responsibilities toward the underprivileged.
King had hoped to achieve a peaceable community more through integration than through desegregation, Baer said.
"Kind described desegregation as essentially negative in the sense that it eliminates discrimination against blacks in public accommodations, education, housing and employment -- those aspects of social life that can be corrected by laws," she said. "Integration means the positive acceptance of desegregation and the welcomed participation of blacks into the total range of human activities."
Looking over to the section of sixth-graders, Baer said, "But the promise of the dream is here, here in your hearts, here in the heart of Bemidji State University."
Lutheran Campus Ministries Rev. Ken Halstead said the annual commemoration is held to observe many things, such as the life and dream of King, and the American ideals of freedom, justice and opportunity for all and people of all races, religions, classes and stations in life.
"And on April 4, 1968, probably the darkest day of my life," said BSU education Professor Annie B. Henry, who had met King before his death, "I heard the television say, 'Bulletin, Bulletin, Bulletin. Martin Luther King was shot.' My friend, my mentor was laid to rest."
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