‘He Kept Walking’: Hundreds Attend Stirring MLK Day Service in New Canaan

The Rev. Christian Peele on Monday morning told a story that her father had told to her, set in his native small town in eastern North Carolina in the late-1950s. 

Just nine or 10 years old at the time, Peele’s father and his fellow townspeople were reached by the message of an Atlanta-born, Alabama minster who’d helped orchestrate the Montgomery bus boycott a few years earlier—a message “that the current state of things was not the final word, and that freedom, peace, access and change could be real,” Peele recalled, addressing more than 250 people gathered at United Methodist Church for 18th Annual Interfaith Service of Worship, celebrating the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Under tenets of nonviolence and King’s vision of both systemic and individual change, the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, Peele said, and the community of Williamston, N.C. “began to organize intensively, meeting at big brick church in middle of the black part of town.”

One morning, some 100 teenagers and adults gathered on the church lawn, ready to march to the courthouse in the middle of town, “raising their signs and their voices for the right to vote,” Peele said.

“My dad says he can still hear their hands clapping and their feet stumping, and the songs they sang as they marched one mile, and then another,” she recalled. “And he felt as much a part of the march as every other person there, his little feet carrying him step by step. ‘We Shall Overcome,’ they sang. ‘Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,’ they sang. After a mile or two, the group started to see, along the sides of the road, police cars and uniformed police holding their batons. First a few and then more. Soon the police presence had taken the shape of a human barricade across the road. Officers arm-in-arm, blocking the marchers’ way, despite the courthouse being just in sight. In that chaotic moment, the front line of the marching group, that front line was face-to-face with the line of police. But right there as they held in place, they kept clapping their hands and moving their feet and singing their songs of freedom. And my dad was so moved and so inspired, and so caught up in the moment that as he marched harder, and as he sang louder, he found his little self moving from the back of the group into the middle of the group. And then to the front of the group. And without thinking, he recalls, he finagled his body right between the knees of two different police officers. And in the flurry of hope that he felt in that moment, he right by himself kept on marching right up to the steps of the courthouse. And the police didn’t seem to be paying much attention. He was probably too small to be too much of notice. But it was a symbolic moment that my dad would never forget. So moved, he kept walking.”

For Peele, the story illustrates the perseverance, belief and potential of those inspired by King—one message of her stirring speech. 

Presented by the Interfaith Council of New Canaan, the hourlong service included opening remarks from the Rev. Eric Fjeldal, testimony from New Canaan High School senior and ABC House of New Canaan student Adrian Davis, interfaith prayer for peace chanted by Jen Zonis, processional and hymns led by the Serendipity Chorale, musical selection from NCHS Choir members Alessio Pantaleo, Ivan Tamayo and Unity Lee-Weise, proclamation read by First Selectman Kevin Moynihan, invocation from the Rev. Peter Walsh and benediction from the Rev. Chapin Garner.

Peele was introduced by the Rev. Daniel Hickman Sr. A Duke Divinity School graduate and ordained American Baptist Church minister, she has worked as executive minister of institutional advancement at the Riverside Church in New York and as deputy director of White House Operations for the Obama White House. 

In her address, Peele provided context for an oft-cited quote from King that includes the words, “The time is always right to do right,” and urged those in attendance that “right now is the right time.” That’s true even when apathy or lack of change convinces people that they “cannot make a difference anyway,” Peele said. The systems that King worked to dismantle “sometimes feel even more entrenched” even if they come in new forms, Peele said, including “racism, poverty, mass incarceration, vitriolic national politics, police brutality, sexism and sexual abuse, climate change, parents and children separated at our borders, children dying in cages, income inequality and the list goes on.”

“But it’s right there, in that place, of uncertainty. In that place where we have all found ourselves at one time or another—it’s right there, just as we wonder if believing is worth it,” she said. “It’s right there that Dr. King’s vision and message calls to us, intersects with our lives and tells us to keep marching on, even if it means walking alone.”

Peele continued, “To keep singing and sing louder, to keep reaching and reach deeper, to reach for each other, to not give up, to keep daring to believe for the sake of our world, for the sake of our souls. We can lean into the hope of King’s vision with our own vision for what is possible, because Dr. King believed that we were the very keepers of time, and that time’s end hadn’t yet been written, and that the pen belonged to us.”

Davis in his remarks called for those in attendance to understand diversity as “so much more than the surface qualities of race and gender,” saying that it includes “diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, religion, nationality and socioeconomic status.”

“It encompasses all qualities that make us unique, as an individual or as part of a group, and it’s acceptance, respect and understanding of those unique qualities,” he said.

Davis said he was inspired by a message delivered during last year’s service by then-NCHS senior Ryan Hernandez, “to keep learning and pushing ahead despite those who would oppose us.”

“It struck a chord with me, because there have been many times in my short life where that’s what I had to do—keep pushing despite opposition,” Davis said. “So as I started to think about the lesson I would share with all of you at today’s service, the quote of Dr. King that came to me was, ‘Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’ This quote is both about King’s work and my time in the ABC program.”

Davis called his decision to participate in the ABC program “the hardest” he’s had to make and that he had to put faith in taking the first step of moving to New Canaan though he didn’t realize at the time the opportunity “was not the result of my hard work alone.”

“My parents and teachers and those who had come before me paved the way,” he said. “Thousands who have worked tirelessly and even died to achieve desegregation and pass the Civil Rights Act in 1954, and especially Dr. King.”

Though he’d never left home before, Davis said he has forged friendships in New Canaan that he expects to last his entire life, and that he’s challenged himself here by getting out of his comfort zone in different ways. Davis said he’s learned how to communicate better and how to be resilient.

“I have learned a great deal during my time in New Canaan, and those experiences have helped me grow up,” he said.
Led by the choir, the congregation sang the hymn “We Are Called,” and the service closed with “We Shall Overcome.”

Fjeldal in his welcome to attendees said that “every voice matters.”

“Because we are interconnected,” he said. “Our actions, our decisions, our choices impact the lives of others, both those we see and relate to on a regular basis, and those we will never have an opportunity to meet.”

Walsh during the invocation asked that those gathered, inspired by King and following his example, “resist oppression in the name of Your love, and work to secure the blessed liberty intended for all your children.”

Zonis said that the interfaith prayer for peace was needed “as much as we have ever needed it.” 

It translates as, “ ‘He who makes peace in high places, let Him make peace for us and all the world,’ ” Zonis said.