Bakari Sellers asked the audience three simple questions: How far have we come, where do we go from here, and does Martin Luther King Jr’s dream matter anymore?

Sellers, a South Carolina state politician and CNN political commentator, spoke at the 29th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, hosted by Oswego State since 1989 to honor King’s achievements.

The celebration started at 6 p.m. with a reading of King’s “A Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” from four Oswego State students.

Hosted by Ryan Rodriguez, the event featured performances of traditional African-American music such as “Amazing Grace,” performed by the Oswego State Singers, and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,”  also known as the Black National Anthem, by the gospel group Jason Wright and the Master’s Touch.

Jason Wright and the Master’s Touch also performed original songs “The Declaration” and “Show Yourself Again.”

Sellers, the keynote speaker, opened his speech by stating that King has been whitewashed and is misremembered.

“I want to make sure we’re having an honest and robust discussion about who we are and who [King] was, and what we can do to go from there,” Sellers said in a pre-event interview.

Sellers spoke about some of the most important events in civil rights history, starting with Feb. 1, 1960. On that date, students in North Carolina sat in on a Woolworths lunch counter, which allowed only white people to eat. They suffered drinks, food and insults being hurled at them. Their actions began the sit-in protests of the 1960s.

Sellers jumped to the story of George

Elmore, a white-passing African-American in the Jim Crow South. Elmore owned multiple businesses, and one day registered to vote. He registered with no problems, but when he attempted to vote in a Democratic primary, he was barred from entrance. Filing a lawsuit, Elmore was cast out of polite society in his hometown, having his stores firebombed and crosses burned on his lawn. His wife was institutionalized due to all the stress of the public vitriol being fired against her and her husband.

The lawsuit, Elmore v. Rice, is the reason black Americans are allowed to vote in primary elections in the south, Sellers said.

Sellers listed a few more civil rights figures that are not as well known as King or Rosa Parks before telling the story of a man who was present at the deadliest civil rights demonstration in U.S. history.

On Feb. 6, 1968, at All Star Bowling Lane in Orangeburg, South Carolina, students from the South Carolina State College, in the same town, decided to march on the bowling alley that remained segregated in 1968, even after the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The protesting students were attacked by the state police, and beaten with police batons that had rawhide whips at the end, Sellers said.

A few days later, on Feb. 8, 1968, the students held another protest, where they lit a large bonfire on their college campus. State police, with shot guns filled with buckshot, a type of shot used to shoot deer and other large game, fired for eight seconds on the college students.

Three students were killed in the attack and 29 were injured.

Among those 29 injured students was Sellers’ father, Cleveland Sellers.

The police officers involved in that attack were found not guilty, while Cleveland Sellers was charged with five felonies. In the court proceedings, Cleveland Sellers could not be convicted of any crimes on Feb. 8, but he was eventually convicted of causing a riot on Feb. 6, at the original demonstration at the bowling lane.

Bakari Sellers closed his speech by talking about where civil rights must go.

“Regardless of what you all think because Barack Obama got elected, we ain’t there yet,” Bakari Sellers said.

Bakari Sellers ended his keynote speech and began to take questions from the audience.

One audience member asked Bakari Sellers how students of broadcasting and journalism can remain hopeful as the “tolerable window” of conversation in the media moves toward the conservative end of the political spectrum.

Bakari Sellers’ advice was to not attempt to fit the mold of media today, but be what you want to see in the world and exhibit excellence in your craft.

Another audience member asked him how he handled political conversations on television panels.

Bakari Sellers replied that he is not having conversations with the people he appears with on television, but rather the people watching the program from home.

“Never argue with a fool, because people watching will never know the difference,” Bakari Sellers said, quoting his father.

Photo: Austin Dearborn | The Oswegonian