Bells ring at Chicago church to mark hour MLK delivered speech
BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter August 28, 2013 6:32PM
Gov. Pat Quinn joins about 100 people gathered at a Chicago landmark — Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church — as the Rev. James Moody rings a bell Wednesday at an event honoring the words with which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ended his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963. | Maudlyne Ihejirika~Sun-Times
Updated: August 29, 2013 2:52AM
“And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire . . . New York . . . Pennyslvania . . . Colorado . . . California . . . Georgia . . . Tennessee . . . Mississippi . . .”
As 2 p.m. arrived, a spiritual silence descended upon the interior of Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church, where seconds before, politicians and community leaders waxed poetic.
Honoring the words with which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ended his “I Have a Dream” speech, the Rev. James Moody began clanging a bell — one, two, three — for 15 seconds.
Gov. Pat Quinn and 100 folks gathered at the landmark church — home to the state’s oldest black congregation and a pulpit where King once spoke — watched it reverberate.
Bells simultaneously were ringing elsewhere in Chicago, at the National Mall, and across the nation, marking the 3 p.m. EDT hour when King delivered his famous words.
“We ring a bell to celebrate the joyous noise of freedom,” Quinn said.
“Dr. King knew that the struggle for equality often requires mass action, so this global bell-ringing would have pleased him. “But he would also see that there is much more work to do before his ideals of social justice are fully realized.”
Email: mihejirika@suntimes.com
Twitter: @maudlynei
