Deval Patrick delivers passionate MLK Day speech

Updated: 3:04 p.m. | Posted: 11:57 a.m.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast is a 26-year tradition in Minneapolis, but this year's event had a different tone, struck by new questions about the tensions between law enforcement and the black community in the last year.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, himself a descendant of Kentucky slaves, recounted the recent history as a keynote speaker at the breakfast, questioning what the incidents say about the nation's culture.

"I have been in anguish over the killings of black men in Ferguson and Staten Island and north Minneapolis and all the places that haven't made the evening news," Patrick told the crowd. "What kind of people harbor such fear of someone like me that they shoot before they ask questions? What sort of people see what the rest of the world sees in the videotaped suffocating of a suspect? And still hold no one accountable?"

Patrick spoke just hours before a Black Lives Matter march to protest the shooting deaths of two Minnesota men by police: Jamar Clark outside an ambulance in north Minneapolis on Nov. 15, and Marcus Golden in the parking lot of an apartment building by St. Paul police last January.

About a month ago, Patrick was named special adviser to a panel reviewing the Chicago Police Department's accountability, training and oversight. The panel was named after a videotape showed a Chicago cop fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The officer has since been charged with murder.

Patrick's speech was one of the most overt signs yet that the Black Lives Matter movement is edging into the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement he helped lead more than 50 years ago.

"The marchers under the Black Lives Matter are faulted for trying to shut down highways or occupy buildings, instead of proposing specific programs and policies to help us heal the devastating lack of understanding between police and young black men. I share some of these concerns and critiques. But I am also grateful that so many today are putting such important issues out front," Patrick said in his speech.

Patrick said in an interview that he didn't believe the relationships between government, police and black America are irretrievably broken, and expressed hope that reform could still fix some of what has made many African Americans so angry and disppointed.

But he told the breakfast that a solution will require an acknowledgement of the grievances that remain, decades after Martin Luther King moved the nation.

"I don't want unrest in the streets. But I do want unrest in our hearts and minds. I do want us to be uneasy about the grim realities of black men and families. And the widespread nonchalance about poverty," he said.

The juxtaposition of an insurgent movement and the annual King remembrance wasn't lost on Sharon Smith-Akinsanya, regional director for the United Negro College Fund in Minneapolis, one of the organizers of the breakfast.

She said Patrick's remarks and the recent unrest in Minneapolis make people like her wonder how work like that of King looked at the beginning, and if it may be about to spring anew.

"When we think about the young people in the Black Lives Matter movement, that's what they're doing," she said. "They're doing what my parents and grandparents did. They're marching and protesting, and want to make sure their voices are heard."