Martin Luther King Jr.: “The time is always right to do what is right”

The following letter was sent to Lewes Mayor Ted Becker and Lewes City Council, with a letter submitted to the Cape Gazette for publication.

We know as new residents what it means to change all your identity to a new address.  We just did it in January 2019 when we became permanent residents of Lewes after living in metro D.C. for over 40 years.  It can be done! 

One of the biggest adjustments for us and what we have noticed the most in this change of residency wasn’t the renewal of our addresses but the lack of diversity in this area. All of our work, social, and familial experience has been rich in diversity, so our beginning engagements in retired life here have left us feeling disoriented.  It was our trip on the trolley tour where we learned about the large and active African-American history in Lewes.

This brought us great joy, and frankly puzzlement as it was a fluke we only knew of this rich history through this tour.  We wondered about the rest of the history that seemed to be hidden as we began to notice more of our new town.  We began to wonder what had happened.

When we saw an article in the Cape Gazette stating a request was made in 2017 by Friendship Baptist Church to rename W. 4th St. to MLK Jr. Blvd. with a community meeting scheduled Dec. 2 to hear responses, we knew we would attend in support of renaming.  At the meeting we were surprised to learn the council scheduled to hear only input about giving an honorary naming for the street and not an actual renaming.  We were incredibly moved by the outpouring of citizen support for renaming the street. 

If you sat through any part of that meeting you would have been given a tremendous history of Lewes by the African-American community, something that is not given to anyone who casually visits here, or even in the same depth as that trolley ride we took. 
We were moved to get up and voice our support for the renaming. We asked why it wasn’t done in 2017 when the first request was made and were told it was “too hard.”  

This was a stunning response, in our view.  As we thought, when in the course of history has anything of significance ever been considered “easy,” and how can “too hard” ever be a reason not to do the right thing?  When we asked how come this request of 2017 took two years to consider we were told “it’s complicated.”  Again, we are stunned.  How can “too complicated” ever be a decision-making factor in the USA?     

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

Pam Brown and Dawnel White
Lewes