Speaker: Historic day is just the beginning

The nation has made a statement Alabama needs to learn, suggests the pastor of Living Word Church in Livingston.
“If you can only see this (election of Barack Obama) as a black achievement, then you still have some growing to do,” said the Rev. Byron P. Franklin speaking to the more than 250 people attending Monday’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Daring to Dream” Scholarship Breakfast at The Hotel at Auburn University.
Franklin said obviously the inauguration is a historic event of great magnitude because a man of color is going to the White House.
“If you look at Barack Obama and only see a black man, you have some growing to do.
“Just like you see the skin color, you have to see his heritage. You can not eliminate either side.”
The pastor said he thinks there is a lesson in this, and “Alabama, we need to learn it.”
“The real beauty in this is that he (Obama) is a man. Yes, we ought to celebrate that he is a man of color going to the White House in the most powerful position in the world. It is symbolic.
“It is also symbolic that he had a white mother and black father.
“You don’t get any blacker than Kenya,” Franklin said. “And I don’t mean this in a negative way, you don’t get any whiter than Kansas.
“This was a statement. We should always look to learn. This was a statement of unity and harmony.
”The nation has made a statement,” Franklin said. “This is a statement we need to learn in Alabama. We need to learn it because I don’t want to see us left behind holding on to old ideals that we learned from our parents and their parents.
“The beauty is that we don’t have to look back,” Franklin said. “And I pray for this, that we can forgive those things which are behind us and move forward to a higher calling.
“The challenge for us is that we let go and move on,” he said. “That is what I want to see us do.”
Franklin finished by asking, “After the champagne, now what? Wednesday morning, what are you going to do?
“Because something has to evolve from where we have been to the transition that has been made,” he said. “Think about where we go from here.
“I believe the greatest challenge that faces us in Alabama is education. I want all of us to do something about education.”
Two individuals were recognized by the East Central Alabama Chapter of The National Forum for Black Public Administrators during the breakfast hosted by both the Pi Epsilon Lambda and the Omicron Kappa chapters of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and NFBPA.
Barbara Hill Pitts of Auburn was honored as the 2009 MLK Community Service Award recipient. She was employed for more than 25 with the Auburn Day Care Center, was Auburn Center director at Ridgecrest for many years, and is employed at the Employment Center of Lee County.
LaKerri Mack, a doctoral student in public administration and public policy at AU, was granted this year’s Public Administration Scholarship for her academic excellence in pursuit of a degree in the field of public administration. She earned her BA degree in African-American studies at Vanderbilt University and her master’s degree in public administration from AU.