Rev. Charles Williams II of King Solomon Baptist Church makes historic journey marking MLK Memorial event

August 23, 2011 http://detnews.com/article/20110823/METRO/108230379 King memorial draws Detroiters to D.C. ORALANDAR BRAND-WILLIAMS / The Detroit News Detroit — Dorothy Jackson is old enough to have experienced the pains of prejudice when parts of America were racially segregated. She also remembers how one man — the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — helped knock down those walls. "It lifted our spirits to know someone was trying to do something," said Jackson, 87, a retired Detroit nurse who couldn't go to nursing school in her hometown of Aliquippa, Pa., because it didn't admit African-Americans. "We had a lot of faith in him." Like hundreds of others from Metro Detroit, Jackson will ride a bus for 26 hours, round-trip, for festivities leading to Sunday's dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. About 250,000 are expected to attend the events. "I'm so excited, excited, excited," said Jackson, who has donated to museums dedicated to King's legacy. Detroiters have felt a special kinship with King, in part because of his deep ties to the city. The memorial's dedication marks the 48th anniversary of King's seminal "I Have a Dream" address at the Lincoln Memorial — a version of a speech he had delivered just weeks before at a march in Detroit. Officials at Historic King Solomon Baptist Church on the city's west side are chartering four buses to take 200 people to Washington on Friday. They'll wear red T-shirts featuring King's name and the question: "Got Jobs?" That's a reference to a Saturday march for "Jobs and Justice" that is part of five days of events leading to the unveiling. "It's going to be a very monumental occasion," said the Rev. Charles Williams II, pastor of the King Solomon church and an organizer of the bus trip. "He's the only African-American with a monument on the Mall. … That monument represents justice." The buses from Detroit plan to leave on Saturday, but Williams said he's been assured by organizers that they will tour the monument. D'Alluntae Vaughn, 16, a junior at University of Detroit Jesuit High School, was selected for the trip by church organizers because of his good grades. "It will be a great experience to be around history," said Vaughn, a member of Boys Hope Girls Hope, a privately funded program that helps high-achieving youths with financial assistance and educational opportunities. "It's also a chance to commemorate a great man." The $120 million memorial is largely funded with private donations. Fourteen years in the making, the memorial is surrounded by those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and is the first on the mall for a nonpresident. Beset by building delays and a controversial decision to make the statue in China, the memorial opened to the public Monday. A formal dedication ceremony featuring President Barack Obama and other celebrities is scheduled for Sunday. "This is going to be epic," said Faith Jackson, an unemployed former retail manager from Detroit who plans to visit the memorial and participate in Saturday's march. "This is something that is going to be historic." Among the passengers traveling from Detroit will be the Rev. Horace Sheffield III, pastor of New Destiny Baptist Church on West Davison. Sheffield was 9 when he took part in 1963's March on Washington with his father, the late labor leader and activist Horace Sheffield Jr., a friend of King's. "Imagine that … the son of a poor sharecropper finds central placement in the nation's capital … it shows all people that people of low degree exalt," said Sheffield. "It talks about the human capital in the context of high unemployment (and) crime. It speaks to what is doesn't have to be." But Sheffield said King would likely have preferred a more humble honor. "He was a selfless man," Sheffield said of King. "He would have preferred the nameless poor African-Americans who marched on the Edmund Pettus Bridge (during the 1965 civil rights march in Selma, Ala.). The folks whose names we will never know." Janet Threatt, the director of the Boys Hope Girls Hope program that is sending five students on the trip, said she feels "part of history." "I'm old enough to know what this man represents, and I get to internalize a great feeling," Threatt said of King. The dedication of the monument and the march are "an opportunity for people to come together," Threatt added. "Nothing but good can come from it."