Reid tells NAACP, ‘Let there be light’

By Denice Thibodeau

Published: October 4, 2008

During the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. sent Milton A. Reid to Danville to assist in the civil rights movement — and Reid was promptly arrested, with many other members of the movement.

Saturday night, Reid visited Danville again, and was presented with a key to the city by Danville Mayor Sherman Saunders during the annual Freedom Fund Banquet of the Danville Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Reid, a retired pastor of 60 years, told the crowd of more than 200 that God’s first order called for change.

Genesis 1:3 says, “And God said, Let there be light and there was light” — proof that God approves of change, Reid said, as it separated light from darkness.

He told the audience that the current political climate calls for change, and said the Republican Party is clearly using “chicanery” to achieve its goals, and that mankind had “crawled back into the darkness” long enough.

“If (mankind had) continued to walk in the light, there would be no need of the NAACP,” Reid said.

Reid stressed the importance of voting and decried the fact that “eight million black folk never registered to vote” while praising the Barack Obama campaign for registering 10,000 black voters in Chicago last week.

He also told the crowd they all needed to be involved in changing conditions in the United States.

“God didn’t fix slavery until we got involved,” Reid said. “God is not going to stop this election if we don’t get involved.”

Reid said the power brokers on Capitol Hill want to maintain the “ways of their own comfort; they will use lies and extortion to win” the upcoming presidential election.