In Paterson, A Wall That Brings People Together

On August 28, 2019, a small ceremony in a small corner of Paterson, NJ, rekindled the spirit of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Exactly 56 years after King challenged all to create a better world, a community came together to open a beautiful park on the corner of Auburn and Governor streets in what had been a blighted vacant lot.

I’ve visited and written about this community project before (in March 2018 and January 2019). Here are side-by-side photos of the park across the street from Bethel A.M.E. Church, where King visited in 1968, days before he was assassinated. I took the one on the left last year; the one on the right, yesterday.

The new park has two centerpieces: Stan Watts’ eight-foot bronze sculpture of King (pictured at the top of this post), and a colorful mural, inscribed “A Wall That Brings People Together,” painted by Paterson students Jonte Silver, Isaiah Stevens, Alberto Bustos and Claudia Clark. The park also features newly planted trees and flowers, chess tables and a Little Free Library.

You can read the whole story here by The Record’s Richard Cowen and in this account by TAPintoPaterson’s Ed Rumley. Several groups and individuals funded the project. Separately this past week, director Steven Spielberg -- in town to remake “West Side Story” -- made a substantial donation to improve Paterson parks.

Amid all this good news, Cowen adds this context:

“Fifty-one years after King’s visit, the corner of Auburn and Governor streets remains a dangerous place. The poverty that King saw as the root of racism pervades Paterson’s mostly black 4th Ward, along with the drugs and violence that accompany it. But the new park… is a respite from all that. It’s not just a symbol of hope; it’s a real place, an example of what can and does happen when people work together.”

The Record’s site also features a short video of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, including a reading from Paterson’s poet laureate (and Little Free Library steward), Talena Lachelle Queen.

Echoing King’s final plea on August 28, 1963, to “let freedom ring,” Queen challenged all to “let the bell ring for justice… for love… for equality.”

As the poet cued her listeners, they responded “ring!”... then louder “Ring!”... then louder “RING!”