Speech, Music to Merge in 20th ‘Realizing the Dream’ Concert Jan. 17 at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – A noted speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the voices contained in seven Tuscaloosa-area choirs will merge during the 2009 “Realizing the Dream … A Long, Long Way” concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 17, at the Concert Hall in The University of Alabama’s Moody Music Building.

Tickets are $15. They may be ordered over the phone starting Monday, Jan. 12, by phoning 205/348-7111, and they also will be available at the door. For details, go to http://realizingthedream.ua.edu/events.html.

The theme for the concert, the 20th presented by the Realizing the Dream Committee, is taken from King’s speech titled “A Realistic Look at the Question of Progress in the Area of Race Relations,” which was delivered April 10, 1957, at a freedom rally in St. Louis. Dr. Aaron L. Dobynes, a UA graduate and senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., will read the excerpts. Dobynes is the former pastor of Pilgrim’s Rest Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa.

The program will include excerpts from the speech as well as music provided by seven choirs: Tuscaloosa Citywide Middle School Honor Choir, Shelton Singers, Stillman College Choir, Prentice Concert Chorale and three choirs from UA: the Afro-American Gospel Choir, University Singers and University Chorus. The Prentice Concert Chorale, formerly the Tuscaloosa Community Singers, will be singing in a “Realizing the Dream” concert for the first time.

The program also will feature a speech by Dr. Clayborne Carson, professor of history and director of the King Papers Project at Stanford University. Carson’s scholarly publications have focused on African-American protest movements and political thought of the period after World War II. In 1985, Coretta Scott King invited Carson to direct a long-term project to edit and publish the papers of King. Under Carson’s direction, the King Papers Project has produced four volumes of a projected 14-volume comprehensive edition of King’s speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications and unpublished writings.

Funded in part by an endowment from the Fiesta Bowl, which also funds minority scholarships at UA, the “Realizing the Dream” concert brings together different parts of the community in ways that are fresh and rewarding. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Realizing the Dream Committee is comprised of faculty and staff from Shelton State Community College, Stillman College and The University of Alabama. The committee’s mission is to raise consciousness about injustice and promote equality, peace and social justice by creating educational and cultural opportunities for growth, empowerment and social change so that every person may experience the bounty of life’s abundant possibilities.