On November 18, 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. attended an Appreciation Dinner at Cabo Hall in Detroit, Michigan. This relatively small private event was held in celebration of United States Congress Representative Charles C. Diggs, Jr. In 1965 Diggs was serving his term of office as a Democrat. Diggs was one of Detroit’s two African American congressmen in office at the time. Approximately 3,000 people attended this event. Dorothy Ashby and her trio provided the entertainment with Dorothy performing on piano rather than her signature instrument the harp. Dorothy Ashby was very much one of the go to musicians for similar events in the Civil Rights movement in the Detroit area including an event at The Ford Theatre earlier that year where Malcolm X was keynote speaker. Ashbys intelligence combined with her consummate sophisticated musicianship made her a very desirable performer at events deemed important to the 1960s Detroit Civil Rights community. At the Cabo Hall dinner Dr. King called for a minimum wage of $2.00 an hour to cover “All the workers of the country.” He went on to say “What this nation needs is not a glorified welfare program but higher wages. This type of guaranteed income is the real war on poverty... THE THREE GREATEST PROBLEMS IN THIS WORLD ARE SOCIAL INJUSTICE, POVERTY AND WAR... It is a strange irony of history that in a nation founded on equality men argue if the colour of a man’s skin determines his moral quality.”
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 14:04:46 +0000