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| Cynthia Bond Hopson |
“Where do we go from
here: Chaos or Community?” This question from Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1967
book of the same title will be the theme for the West Tennessee Delta Heritage
Center’s Black History Month program, Saturday, February 7, at 2 p.m. Noted author, Haywood County native and
cultural historian, Cynthia Bond Hopson, will speak and facilitate a panel of
local leaders.
Panelists
will include Haywood County’s first elected African American Sheriff, Melvin
Bond; Brownsville’s first African American Mayor W. D. Rawls Jr.; Fred
Silverstein Jr., Chair of the Human Rights Commission; Douglass Community
organizer and educator Johnetta Walker Neal; Brownsville Alderman and former
housing administrator Carolyn B. Flagg; County Mayor Franklin Smith; and
activist and business owner, Cynthia Rawls Bond.
“This chaos or community topic was Dr. King’s
examination of American race relations and the movement after a decade of U.S.
civil rights struggles. It
offers a perfect opportunity to reflect, renew and recommit to building bridges
of love and hope,” says Bond Hopson, whose books on Haywood County include The Women of Haywood: Their Lives, Our
Legacy, Wiggle Tales and Times of Challenge and Controversy.
According to Bond Hopson, “When Dr. King wrote
‘somewhere somebody must have some sense. People must see that force begets
force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending
spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must
have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the
chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love,’ he wanted us to
understand we have the power to change the world through lives of service and
deliberate action. Our distinguished panelists have done just that.”
Following
the program, Bond Hopson will sign copies of her books. This
is a free event.
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