Never missed King Day at the Dome

Robert Johnson remembers a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. in his parents’ house in wooded Mississippi.

“It had eyes in that picture that appeared to follow you around the room. In that picture, King was saying to me, ‘You are next.’ But I did not know what he meant.”

Gladys Wallace grew up in segregated Moncks Corner and sees the lingering legacy of that racism embodied in the Confederate flag flying on the State House grounds.

Both Midlands residents have worked to keep the slain civil rights leader’s memory alive by never missing a single King Day at the Dome march on the S.C. State House since it started in 2000.

Driven that year by a coalition of civil rights groups and community leaders protesting the Confederate flag flying on the S.C. State House dome, lawmakers agreed to move the flag near the Confederate soldier monument where it still flies today.

Since 2000, the NAACP continued the King Day at the Dome march, which turns 15 on Monday. This year’s theme is “Demanding Justice; Standing for Dignity.”

This year’s march follows a year when white police officers escaped charges in the deaths of unarmed black men – one by gunshot, and one who died after an officer placed him in a chokehold.

Speakers include NAACP president Cornell Brooks, U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and S.C. Poet Laureate Marjory Wentworth.

“It’s important that we commemorate the work of Dr. Martin Luther King – that his legacy be kept before our communities – not just referring to people of color, (but) for everyone,” Wallace, 82, said.

“He made the ultimate sacrifice and not just for people of color. His journey was for peace and justice for all people.”

‘Never affected me’

Johnson, 75, a U.S. Army veteran with two tours in Vietnam and a Purple Heart, said he would never miss the march because King means so much to him.

The civil rights leader also meant a lot to his parents, he said.

Johnson’s father was a minister and construction worker with a third-grade education. His mother, later in life, went back to school and took a state job. But they always told him he could be anything he wanted to be and protected him as best they could from racism.

They also taught him to set high expectations for himself.

“Sure, I was called ‘N’ word occasionally,” he said. “But it never affected me and where I wanted to go” because he always had a goal, he added.

That goal led him to the military where he became Fort Jackson’s first black top drill sergeant of the year, he said.

Johnson retired with the rank of command sergeant major.

Johnson attributed his successes to his mindset: “I was in the world, but not of the world.”

‘Equality for all people’

Wallace, a retired Richland 2 school teacher and wife of a military veteran, now commits a lot of time to volunteering for the NAACP as she has done for more than 15 years.

“I feel that each of us should do our part in helping to bring about justice and equality for all people, and so I have an appreciation for the work that those persons before me have done – a sense of gratitude for their struggle and their sacrifices.”

Though the march has had as many as 50,000 and as few as 1,000 people in attendance, the event does not lose its meaning when the size of the crowd decreases, she said.

The Confederate flag has remained a target of the protests as demonstrators have sought the flag’s removal from the State House grounds altogether.

Wallace also wants the flag retired to a place of history, she said.

While some South Carolinians “hold it in high honor,” the flag represents a government that “was not so favorable to me,” she said.

“There certainly has been marked improvement, but as long as that flag flies over the (State House) grounds, waves in front of our state capitol, it sends a message to me that the Confederacy and all that it meant still lives.”

Citing the national uproar over the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police officers, Wallace said she fears most for her grandchildren – the boys especially – as they move through life as black men.

Sometimes something happens that reminds her of the trials blacks have faced in the past.

“I try to not wake up in the morning thinking ‘Someone’s going to be after me today,’ ” she said.

“I wake up thinking it’s a new day, and you try to put the negative aside. You can’t live with it or it will devour you.”

This story was originally published January 18, 2015 at 2:09 PM with the headline "Never missed King Day at the Dome."