Coming for to carry me home

MOSES LAKE — Fewer than 30 people attended Friday night, but what the 2007 Black History Celebration lacked in size, it made up for in spirit.

The Lake City Foursquare Gospel Church in Moses Lake was the site for the celebration, designed to educate the community about the history not told in school textbooks, according to event coordinator and choir director Marva M. Brown.

"It's just to find out about how during slavery in the 1800s and 1700s, how black people were treated and things they endured during that time," Brown said. "Slavery, runaway slaves and that kind of thing, and rewards put over their heads, like $500 for a 12-year-old runway slave boy they worked real hard in the fields."

The annual celebration, hosted this year by the Moses Lake Gospel Community Choir, has been put on for at least the 13 years Brown resided in the area, she said.

"We pray also this information provided to the public tonight will enhance their understanding and entice them to study black history, something they were never taught in school, and it still isn't being taught today," Brown explained. "So it may help to make our better world become a better place to live."

Today's youth, black or white, is not aware of what went on in slavery days, Brown said.

"They should be educated to that fact," she said.

Such choir songs as "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and the Negro National Anthem, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," were punctuated with lessons about Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, slave Anthony Burns and civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Mavis Barnett delivered the keynote message.

Regina Matthews and 9-year-old son Ethan were in attendance to support their husband and father, choir member Anthony Matthews.

"It's very inspirational, it's nice to learn and hear about our history," Regina Matthews said. "There's a lot of our history, black history, the community at large does not know. Even our community doesn't know, because we weren't taught. It needs to be continually taught in school because black history is history, period. It's everybody's history. It's history of America."

The Rev. Samuel Didier, a recent arrival in Moses Lake, said he was in attendance because he's a longtime friend of the Rev. Jimmy York of New Light Missionary Baptist Church and beginning to work at Say Yes Lord Ministries.

Didier was enthused to hear speaker Paul Riegal, pastor of the Faith Community Church, speak about how he believes a form of slavery exists in Moses Lake today.

"Slavery not only goes to the old days of slave trade and so forth, but there are many people today that are slaves in Moses Lake that need the Lord Jesus Christ to be set free from the bondage of sin," Didier said. "I thought Pastor Riegal said that very well. It brought me out of my seat."

Didier didn't think the smaller attendance numbers dampened the mood of the celebration.

"There was a small gathering, but there was a very excitable gathering, a very involved gathering," Didier said. "There was a lot of spirit here, even though there wasn't a whole lot of people."