Civil rights on the red carpet: Freedom Awards honor 3 icons

The FedExForum usually houses the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies. On this particular day, the keepers of a dream held court. Yes, that dream – the one conjured up by Martin Luther King Jr.

Three of those keepers – civil rights advocate Xernona Clayton, attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, and filmmaker Spike Lee – were on hand to shape the next generation of change-makers. The Freedom Award Student Forum gave high school students the chance to speak with the iconic trio only hours before they are presented with the prestigious Freedom Award by the National Civil Rights Museum.

That evening, on the red carpet near the Orpheum Theatre, one of the stars of “Rush Hour” is escorting the iconic Mrs. Clayton. Chris Tucker, a native son of Atlanta, never strays too far away from his comedic roots. As a DJ plays Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough,” Mr. Tucker, a friend and proud mimic of the late pop star, goes into one of the King of Pop’s trademark shimmies.

When asked about another Atlanta civil rights icon, the late Congressman John Lewis, Mr. Tucker grew serious. “That’s another [legend]. ... Becoming his friend and having him as a mentor, it’s a blessing,” Mr. Tucker says. “He lived a whole life of service. He was a great example for my generation and the generation after me.”

Less than a mile from the Orpheum is the National Civil Rights Museum, which is housed at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. King’s assassination. A few steps before the glass door entrance at the museum, there is a wreath and a harrowing marker, which includes these lines from the book of Genesis:

They said one to another,
Behold, here cometh the dreamer …
Let us slay him …
And we shall see what will become of his dreams

It’s impossible to separate Dr. King, the museum, and these awards. They’re all part of perhaps the most recognizable movement in this country’s history.

Mrs. Clayton’s presence is reflective of this movement and how it’s changed over time. A native of Muskogee, Oklahoma, the 94-year-old moved from Chicago to Atlanta in 1965 and joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She worked closely with both Kings – Martin and Coretta Scott – in the midst of her own broadcasting career, which began in 1967. Mrs. Clayton was the first Black person in the South to have her own TV show. While she worked for 30 years with Turner Broadcasting System and became an executive in 1988, she never forgot her community. She created the Trumpet Awards in 1993 to honor Black achievements.

How a knife launched a mission

After she received her Freedom Award, Mrs. Clayton reflected on a life of defiance and determination, a story that stemmed from a white butcher pulling a knife on her and her twin sister and their boyfriends at a restaurant many years ago.

“To this day, that look of a knife and a white man telling you, ‘You don’t belong here,’ still bothers me after all these years I’ve been living,” she said in her speech. “And while I could sit around and brood about it, I decided I’m gonna do something about this to relieve myself of this pain. And I started then, and it continues today every time I see or hear, feel, or determine that there’s a move somewhere in my society that prevents me from being a full and qualified citizen.”

She also talked about fighting dragons, a commentary reflective of her influence on the late Calvin Craig, the former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Craig famously denounced the klan the same month Dr. King was assassinated, and credited Mrs. Clayton’s influence.

“I have adopted that philosophy that if you can, you will. If you want to, you will. I’ll continue to do that as long as I live, to rid society from the dragons of prejudice,” she said. “And I had an excellent partner in Martin Luther King Jr., whom I brought to Memphis that awful year that we wish we could forget. ... He was doing what we both knew we had to do, that when you find pockets of prejudice, you keep on fighting, don’t give up. The victory will be yours in the end.”

Mr. Lee has made an entire career of narrative building – and rebuilding. Still, there’s one dark date in American history that speaks for itself – April 4, 1968. Mr. Lee, who was 11, remembers it like it was yesterday.

“I was sitting on my stoop. ... I heard a woman screaming and then she walked towards our house. It was my mother screaming,” he recalled. “And I’d never seen my mother that hysterical. ‘They killed him. They killed him. They killed Dr. King.’”

Like Dr. King, Mr. Lee was a Morehouse man born in Atlanta. The filmmaker’s career has notably dealt with race relations and events specific to the Civil Rights Movement. As relates to Dr. King, Mr. Lee’s portrayal of “Malcolm X” in 1992 might seem more ironic, but no less relevant. Mr. Lee also directed and produced a documentary about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, “4 Little Girls.”

One of Mr. Lee’s quotes about America and its treatment of Black people rang out before he was presented with the Freedom Award: “This United States of America [was] never set up for us to succeed. It was not meant for us to thrive. Now yes, things have changed, more opportunities, but the barricades are still there. And so, once you know the plan, the game, you can move accordingly.”

“We are called on ... to make a new American democracy”

Back in 2016, Sherrilyn Ifill wrote a powerful eulogy about her cousin, Gwen, a media icon who died that November.

“My cousin, Gwen, and I were the daughters of two immigrant brothers, who were driven by their faith in God, their love for family, for black people, and by their ambition and determination,” she wrote for The American Prospect. “They also believed deeply in the idea of America – even with all its flaws, and they made us, their many children, believe in it too.”

After she received the Freedom Award, Ms. Ifill spoke about democracy in a spirit that Dr. King described as “the fierce urgency of now.” What resulted was a soul-stirring challenge to not only attendees, but the country itself.

“I’m not trying to restore American democracy. I’m not trying to bring it back like it was. I loved Barack Obama too, but I’m not trying to be back like it was when he was president,” she said. “What we are called on to do is to make a new American democracy, and to do this, we need power.”

“Just as those who came before us, it’s now time for us to walk in our rightful position as founding mothers and fathers of the new American democracy. ... We are being called upon in this moment to do so,” she said. “I’m not sad because it is only when the old shows itself to be no longer tenable for the majority that people’s ears and eyes are open to true transformation. This is our moment.

“We’re being called upon to bring our radical democratic imagination to push this country into a new, more dynamic place of democracy,” she continued.

Ms. Ifill’s optimism, tinged with a no-nonsense approach to oppression, is what makes her the Legal Defense Fund’s forever lawyer, currently serving as president and director-counsel emeritus. She encouraged those in attendance to “overlay our power with love.”

“There’s strength in love. We must have power and we must have love,” she said. “Dr. King said it clearly. He said, power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power, he said, is sentimental and anemic.”

If the morning’s student forum was any indication, the heroes of tomorrow are already meeting the moment. Three of the recipients’ young counterparts continued their proud social justice legacy.

Where Mr. Lee famously threw a trash can through the window in “Do the Right Thing,” Corey Irby, a senior at East T-STEM Academy High School, did the opposite. Mr. Irby planned and led a nationally awarded cleanup effort. Ms. Ifill, with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, was not the only attorney celebrated this day. Maria Machado, a student attorney and senior at Central High School, co-founded Soy Mia, a nonprofit providing free menstrual products across Memphis, focusing on the Hispanic community.

Like Mrs. Clayton, the third honoree, Adaria Crutcher, worked tirelessly toward the preservation of Dr. King’s dream. But Adaria’s sense of loss mirrored that of Bernice King – the death of her father.

“When my dad passed away in 2021, it was super hard for me to cope,” says Ms. Crutcher, a senior at White Station High School. “I realized that lots of kids just throughout my community, they don’t know how to properly react to their emotions. They either just suffocate them, or they try to ignore them, but that’s never a good thing.”

She turned tragedy into triumph with two of her classmates as they created a “safe environment” for students who experience suicidal thoughts. The name of their project? Storyunfinished.