URBANA – A black Jesuit priest who hails from East St. Louis told a crowd celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. that much remains to be accomplished in this country in terms of racial equality and economic justice. "I no longer want to hear about a dream. We should be ashamed," said the Rev. Joseph Brown, professor and director of the Black American Studies program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and author of several books. The keynote speaker at Sunday evening's 23rd annual King service in the Great Hall at the Krannert Center said at the beginning of his spirited speech that some might not be comfortable with what he had to say. "Why are there 40 million poor people in America?" Brown asked, referring to the number who have no health insurance. Affirmative action has become an unpopular concept, he said. "We never had it, and now we got courts saying we don't need it no more," he said. To those who hold him up as an example of a person from economically depressed East St. Louis who went on to do well, he responds: "I got more relatives, most of whom are uninsured, unemployed and underemployed. I know we have not overcome most of anything." "I am concerned that we have either become depressed, complacent or we continue in our ignorance until it becomes invincible," he said. "I guarantee 90 percent of the people in this room have watched 'American Idol' and not anything on C-Span." King wasn't murdered because he had a dream, Brown said. He was murdered as he tried to win economic justice for garbage haulers in Memphis. Knowing he was a potential murder victim, King continued to work tirelessly, Brown said.
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