On Monday night, Meloday James saw “King in the Wilderness.”
It was Martin Luther King Day, and the Westport Country Playhouse showed the documentary produced by Westport author/playwright/professor Trey Ellis.
The film portrayed a side of the civil rights icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner seldom discussed today: a conflicted leader, who at the time of his death was assailed by critics on both the left and right.
Melody — a 1964 Staples High School graduate — was deeply moved.
It resonated personally: She saw footage of the violent 1966 demonstrations in Chicago and Cicero, Illinois, for fair housing.
Melody arrived to start as a community organizer for JOIN Community Union in Uptown that same day.
“Some of us went to the demo,” she recalls.
“They threw cherry bombs at us. There were screaming, violent white people –much as we witnessed in Washington on January 6, 2021 — full of hatred. It was terrifying!”
That reminded her, in turn, of earlier activism, when she was still a Staples student. Her class raised funds for the World Health Organization.
At the UN (from left): Pete Seidman, Carole Seligman, Joy Wassell, Deb Begley, the head of the WHO, Tim Honey, Tom Dublin, Melody James, Katie Burnham, Dick Sugarman.
A few hours before watching “King in the Wilderness,” President Trump was inaugurated.
One of his first acts was to begin the process to withdraw the United States from the WHO.
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