Residents of Turner Station gathered at Union Baptist Church on Main Street last Sunday for the community’s annual Black History Celebration.
Sunday’s event also served as the Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, which was delayed by a winter storm in January.
Servant Courtney Speed and the Turner Station Kingdom Economic System hosted the event, and Speed served as master of ceremonies. She invited another longtime Turner Station resident, Muriel Gray, to speak about her experiences on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement.
“I’ve come this far by faith, leaning and depending on the Lord, and he has not failed me yet,” Gray said as she walked up the aisle.
Around the same time as the sit-ins and the freedom rides of the early 1960s, when Gray was still a teenager, she was fighting for equal rights in her own community. She was part of a group that demonstrated to get a Black cashier hired at the grocery store in Logan Village Shopping Center.
“We demonstrated to get her there, and then it moved up Dundalk Avenue to the dress shop, where we had a few more people hired,” Gray said.
She graduated from Sollers Point High School in 1962, then married Rev. William A. Gray III. They moved to Danville, Virginia in 1964 and where they organized alongside the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Once, Muriel Gray fixed dinner for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to town, they asked if we wanted to demonstrate, we were more than glad to,” Gray said. “We began the demonstration showing young people, older people — whoever wanted to demonstrate, we taught them how to demonstrate.”
Gray and her husband prepared demonstrators for the worst.
In Danville during the summer of 1964, they were kicked, beaten, cursed at and spat on by racist counter-protestors, and the police sprayed firehoses and beat them with batons. Because the movement was strictly nonviolent, they couldn’t fight back at all.
At the time, Gray was pregnant.
“As pregnant women, they showed us how to bow down with our hands around our knees, so the police sticks wouldn’t hit us in our stomach,” Gray said. She and another reverend’s wife both lost their children from the abuse they took.
“As a result, we got many many people hired in many different areas, even in the hospitals in Danville, Virginia,” Gray said. “Only because we fought for that — we fought for us to go to restaurants.”
A ‘leap year baby,’ Muriel Gray turned 80 on Feb. 29 of this year.
Past and present members of the U.S. Armed Forces were also recognized at the celebration, with many veterans and military families in the community.
“We often take for granted everyday things,” said Michael Hancock as he remembered his father, Sgt. Arthur Kermit Hancock.
Arthur was a “Buffalo Soldier,” a member of the 92nd Infantry Division in World War II. They were the only African-American infantry division that served in combat in Europe during the war.
“When he was over in Italy during the war, he got shot in the leg,” Michael said. “He got shot and it destroyed the nerves in his leg. He had to wear a special brace on his foot just so he could walk.”
But even though he took a bullet for his country, Arthur faced racism and discrimination. It wasn’t until after the war that Black soldiers were even guaranteed equal treatment in the Army.
“He told us that the United States, they treated the prisoners of war better than they treated the Black soldiers,” Michael said.
As the Black History Celebration concluded, members of Boy Scout Troop 270 and Girl Scout Troop 353 marched the colors out. Outside, kids enjoyed horseback rides along Turner Station’s Main Street.
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