Dayton, Smith criticize 'savages,' Trump during MLK Day event

The governor also called for higher minimum wages and rebuked President Donald Trump's recent alleged anti-immigrant remarks.

"Right now, too often, indecency seems to have the upper hand, when the president of the United States is the worst public perpetrator of racism, indecency and bigotry," Dayton told a capacity-crowd at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in downtown St. Paul, to heavy applause.

Politically charged breakfasts, speeches and a youth rally at the Ordway Center marked the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the Twin Cities, with speaker after speaker criticizing the tone emanating from the White House and overshadowing national discourse.

"Voices in the dark basement of our country have a sympathetic ear in the White House," said Tina Smith, Dayton's former lieutenant governor, who became a U.S. senator 10 days ago. "We need to go into the basement of this great country of ours and clean it up. We need to face these systems that hold us back. ... I will be fearless."

King, who was born on Jan. 15, 1929, was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., where he traveled in support of that city's black sanitation workers, on strike for higher wages and safer working conditions. MLK Day was signed into federal law in 1983 and first celebrated as a federal holiday three years later.

In St. Paul, a 9 a.m. youth rally was held at the Ordway Center, followed an hour later by remarks from Dayton, Smith, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and state Rep. Ilhan Omar, DFL-Minneapolis.

Dayton, in his remarks, emphasized the importance of "raising minimum wages sooner rather than later" and also criticized job and housing discrimination.

Omar, a Somali refugee, acknowledged the political turmoils and colonial history that have held back her "beautiful, glorious country," as well as the African continent that the "president of the United States described with grotesque vulgarity last week."

She said her family was welcomed to America by "Lady Liberty ... without judgment and without cruelty"

But her middle school was less friendly.

Omar said she once walked to the board to solve a math problem without permission because her teacher refused to call on her, even though she was the only student with her hand up.

"We need to recognize that racism has never been settled, though it has gone unreported," Omar said. "We are at a bigger risk of destroying ourselves than falling at the hands of foreign extremism. ... No one today has the privilege of inaction. We must be courageous, and we must spread a radical vision of love and unity."

Carter, elected St. Paul's first black mayor in November and one of its youngest, called on residents to move beyond politically charged Facebook posts and live their values through community service.

"The model of electing someone and then (tuning) in four years later to see what happened doesn't work," Carter said. "I'm asking you not to send me to City Hall. I'm asking you to go there with me."

The mayor added: "If Martin Luther King were alive today, he wouldn't just do the work on his birthday. He would do the work year-round."

In Minneapolis, the General Mills Foundation and UNCF — formerly known as the United Negro College Fund — held an MLK Holiday Breakfast featuring keynote speaker David Oyelowo, a British-Nigerian actor and producer who played the lead role of King in the film "Selma." The event drew 2,300 attendees.

Without mentioning President Trump by name, or the language the president is alleged to have used to describe Haiti and African countries, Oyelowo said it was not a coincidence that God chose a man named King "to remind and reprimand this nation for the ills done to a kingly people from a kingly place."

"Through slavery, what was taken from Africa was Africa's best. ... You are descended from Africa's best," he continued. "That means you are America's best. That is who we are, regardless of things that have been said, regardless of things that we may have said about and to ourselves. ... That is where we must start from, who we truly are."

Through a partnership with Interfaith Action of Greater St. Paul and others, the event was broadcast live at 14 community breakfast locations, reaching an additional 1,900 people.

Oyelowo, who noted that his father convinced him as a kid that he descended from royalty, said black America struggles with the feeling that its history began with slavery.

He recalled a man from Botswana hailing him by saying, "What's up, my N-word?"

"I said I am not that," Oyelowo said. "Don't you ever call me or anyone who looks like me that.

"I know my history did not begin with slavery, but that is partly because I lived in Nigeria for seven years," he said. "It's one thing to know that intellectually. It's another thing to know that spiritually. ...It means you know who you are. ...Black people, people of color, have to know who they are historically."

The presentation featured recently-rediscovered footage of King speaking to a large outdoor audience at the University of Minnesota in 1967, just months before his assassination.

"We love America, and I personally decided to tell America the truth, because I love America so much," King told the assembled students and teachers. "I want to see our great nation stand as the moral leader of the world. I don't determine what is right and wrong by taking a Gallup poll of majority opinion. ... I'm concerned about justice for everybody, the world over."

Quoting an old African-American spiritual, King ended his remarks with his signature call to action for a better world, one in which everyone can say "free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last."