In Boston, activist Angela Davis says to 'hold onto infinite hope' as Trump takes office

Before her keynote speech at the Martin Luther King Memorial Breakfast in Boston, the famed activist Angela Davis paused to take in the moment. “I want to hold on to the spirit,” Davis said.

A song had just ended, a classic African American spiritual, “Bright Mansions Above,” performed by the Boston Arts Academy Spirituals Ensemble. It was one of many offerings at the 55th annual MLK breakfast, where hundreds of state, city and community leaders filled a huge Seaport ballroom to hear a message of resistance from Davis.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year coincided with Inauguration Day. The rare overlap meant that Donald Trump was taking the oath of office on the same day as the federal holiday.

“It seems that each year we witness ever more compelling evidence why we should not only celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the radical freedom movement for which he served as a spokesperson," Davis said, "but also why we need to renew our commitments to struggles against racism, militarism and capitalism.”

It was a lesson in standing up to oppression, and Davis — retired professor and former Brandeis University student, author and social justice activist once on the FBI's most wanted list — urged the crowd to remember who determines the course of social and political history: people, not politicians.

Davis offered words of encouragement in what for many was a dark hour: ” What we are experiencing now will not last,” she said. “We’re up against racist and recklessly destructive enemies. But we are many."

Among the attendees at the breakfast were U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, both of whom skipped Trump’s inauguration Monday.

“ These are sobering, sobering times,” Pressley said in a speech. “It's no longer called Jim Crow, but these oppressive efforts are codified in law and legislated just like Jim Crow.”

But Black people, she said, “are miracles of resilience and animations of ingenuity.” Pressley said she doesn't romanticize Black resilience. “But there is no denying that we possess resilience at a cellular level. It is an ancestral inheritance.”

She called on those in the room to “revisit King's blueprint for radical change,” and to prepare for the urgent fights ahead.

Markey noted who was sitting on stage with Trump at his inauguration — a handful of white billionaires. He called the new Trump administration antithetical to King's dream.

“ The three wealthiest white men in America — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — control more wealth than the bottom 165 million people in our country,” Markey said. “And Donald Trump has invited those three white men to sit by him at his inauguration.”

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren was at the inaugural, but sent a recorded video to the event in Boston.

“Look, the extremists want us to feel powerless. They are counting on apathy, cynicism, heartbreak, or all of the above, to be their rocket fuel. But if we've learned one thing from Dr. King, it's that together we are not powerless,” Warren said. “We have the power of unity. And when things got tough for Dr. King, when the opposition got angrier and more hateful, Dr. King never wavered.”

The theme of the morning, “Freedom isn’t Free,” was based on Davis’ 2016 book, “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement.”

Davis spoke about social movements, mentioning the war in Gaza, civil rights, and the Black Liberation movement: “It's about laying new foundations for a more equitable and more habitable future. It's about coming together to reaffirm our collective commitment to build a future world where genocide and war and xenophobia and racism and heteropatriarchy and systematic destruction of life on our planet will have become distant memories.”

Gov. Maura Healey, also speaking at the event, reiterated that she aims to work with the federal government under Trump “in any way that benefits Massachusetts.” She also promised, as she did in her recent State of the Commonwealth address, “not to change who we are.”

“And who are we? We are a city. We are a state where the sin of slavery was first ended," Healey said. "I think of Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker, who sued for their own freedom under the terms of our then brand new state constitution.”

She extolled Massachusetts as the state where Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth came to live in freedom and start their movements, and where W.E.B. Du Bois was born and raised and helped found the first chartered branch of the NAACP.

“And we are the state where Dr. King and Coretta Scott King lived, learned and grew into world-changing leaders,” Healey said.

The MLK event exists thanks to a long partnership between two churches — St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church and Union United Methodist Church. Before building St. Cyprian’s in Roxbury, parishioners used to worship at a white church on Beacon Hill, according to James Dilday, a member of the breakfast committee. “The leaders of that church would have it fumigated after the Black people completed their worship service.”

Dilday said worshipers built St. Cyprian’s in 1924. “It was only then that they were free to worship as they chose,” he said, “without the stigma of being looked upon as less than others or less than human.”

Organizers of the annual breakfast say it’s the nation’s longest-running event dedicated to honoring King’s legacy. It’s existed since before King's birthday became a national holiday, a campaign Davis and many others fought for.

“Our struggle for liberation has unfolded over decades, has unfolded over centuries,” Davis said. “And against the backdrop of our long history of struggle for liberation, the results of the recent election are a relatively minor phenomenon.”

She pointed the audience once again to King’s words: “Sometimes we have to accept finite disappointments, but we must hold on to our infinite hope … Trump may have won the November election, but the movement continues.”